


Three Wishes

by nimmieamee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Mirror Universe, Nightmare Brady Bunch, Serpent Alice, Serpent Betty, kidnapped mafia princess Veronica Lodge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-20 22:45:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 71,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13727574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: Betty Cooper wants to return to a time when her mother was more consistent, Jughead was more hers, and a looming civil war wasn't breaking up her friendship with Veronica. Veronica wants to keep her friendship with Betty and for the town of Riverdale to recognize everything the Lodges have to offer. And Alice isn't being upfront about what she wants.But at least one of them will see all her wishes come true.





	1. The Magic Carpet

**Author's Note:**

> A warning: this story will feature relationships between stepsiblings who did not spend their formative years as siblings and who are not blood related. If that bothers you, I need you to take your cursor and bring it to the upper left hand corner of your screen. See how there's an arrow pointing left there? I need you to click that arrow right now. Thank you.
> 
> As ever, huge thanks to the wonderful [Yavannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie/pseuds/Yavannie) for all her patience and hard work beta-reading this story.

Betty woke that morning with an urge to lie in bed forever. It was like all the shocks of the past few months had suddenly swooped up above her and pinned her down, leaving her exhausted.

It took effort to turn off her alarm clock. The red clock was the only spot of color in the room. The grey-drizzled day was bleaching all the pastels, all the floral wallpaper. When she observed herself in her mirror, she felt colorless, with only the pink rims around her eyes standing out. 

Her mother and Chic chattered all through breakfast. Alice's chatter had an edge now that it hadn't before, one that said, _We're out of the woods, see? So the chatter was right. I was right all along to try and chatter away our problems._

Betty felt irritated. 

"Dad came by," she said, poking at her pancakes. Chocolate chip. Again.

Chic stilled. Alice flipped her hair over her shoulder.

"I don't care what your father does, Betty," she said. "He can do what he wants."

"Maybe if we had FP Jones here, he'd come by less often," Betty muttered, voice dropping to a register that was not at all Betty, that was instead deliberately provoking.

Alice stilled just like Chic had. Betty felt satisfied.

Chic stilling wasn't enough. Chic was insubstantial, not worth trusting. Chic was air. But her mother should show some reaction. Some effect. Four months ago Alice had sat at the table and sobbed because of what had become of the Coopers, and three months ago she'd promptly invited Hal back in and pretended nothing had gone wrong, and two months ago she'd railed about the Southside threatening everything that was right and good, and one day ago she'd pressed Jughead's extremely Southside father to bury a body for her.

Events never swooped up and pinned Alice down -- Alice was too inconstant for that. Alice sacrificed consistency, sacrificed everything, in order to pretend at sunny normalcy. 

This felt unnatural and somehow ugly. Betty stabbed again at her pancakes while Chic said, "Who's FP Jones?" in that blank, untrustworthy voice of his.

"Nobody--" Alice said, as Betty said, "Jughead's father. Mom's old friend, too. They go _way_ back. You should ask her sometime, Chic."

Alice's fury was all the set of her mouth, in her eyebrows. Betty's answering coolness was in her eyes and also her eyebrows. Eyes like Hal. Eyebrows like her mom. She felt made of all the wrong parts today. She pushed up from the table, ignoring her mother's squawk, and went to get her coat and backpack.

_Please let Jughead be at the door. Please let Jughead be at the door._

He was coming up the walk. Relief grabbed her by the throat. She let the door slam behind her and was running to meet him, and his answer was just to hold out his arms and let her barrel in. Her backpack hit his side and he said, "Ooof," for perhaps dramatic purposes. Otherwise he didn't complain.

"You don't want to grab an umbrella? I'll hold it," he said.

He always found a way to hold it. 

"Just keep your arm around me," Betty told him. "Please?"

Jughead's mouth quirked. It made his face softer, robbed attention from his anxiously tapping hands and the ever-present bags under his eyes. He looked young and wonderful, and on an impulse Betty cupped his jaw and kissed him quickly, mostly to keep him looking that way.

Then she ducked her head, because they were walking along Elm Street in broad daylight and she was still a Cooper girl.

"Were you and your dad okay?" she said. "After?" 

The Cooper women and Jones men had split at Pop's. It had seemed futile to tell Jughead and his father to _get home safe_ , especially after what FP had done for them. So she'd just watched Jughead's father lurch off into the night, stiff and still smelling of chemicals, with Jughead following and throwing looks back at her. 

"He wasn't happy when I told him we dumped the car," was all Jughead said. "He doesn't trust the Sweetwater. For I guess obvious reasons."

Now the smile had been chased from his face. His brows were drawn tight. Betty felt futile and responsible. She grasped for something to do. Her irritation and sense of responsibility collided, and produced something new.

"I have an idea," she said, as they walked. "You know, after mom and dad got back together, before splitting up again, mom made him give her the new keys to the _Register_. And this time _she_ changed the locks, so she's the one who has access to it--"

"Eminent domain. They tell me that's fair," Jughead said, wincing.

"Well, but think about it, Jug," Betty said. "You did something for her, or your dad did. And you need somewhere to publish your article about Hiram Lodge buying up the Southside--"

He stared at her, stupefied.

"In the _Register_? Betty, your mom would never."

Her mom would never. But Betty wanted to crumple up all of Alice's _nevers_ , like so many used-up tissues, and throw them in the trash. Alice already did that kind of thing whenever it suited her to. 

"I am going to make sure it happens," she decided. "I'm going to get you a platform. More people read the _Register_ than the _Blue and Gold_ , anyway--"

"And if the _Register_ gets sued?"

"Then I guess my parents will have to stop fighting over Chic and being low-level monsters long enough to hire themselves a legal team. Anyway, journalists do have certain privileges. Weatherbee won't count high school journalists as real journalists, but if you get a byline in the _Register_ you then you _are_ a real one, Jug."

She turned to him appealingly, and he did appeal to her -- by smiling again. When she clasped his hand, it locked in firm around her own. 

"I tremble before that note of a plan in your voice, Betty Cooper."

The warmth of his voice carried her through the grey morning all the way to school, keeping her from feeling pinned again. They were in the hallway when they parted, and they only parted because the click-clack of heels vanished the smile from his face again.

"Jughead!" came Veronica's voice, sharp. "Jughead!"

"Ah, the Grace Kelly of gentrification," Jughead muttered. "I'm gonna take a rain check, Betts, but it's to save you from a scene. And her, I guess. She _does_ want us all the be 'civilized' about her father's relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of anyone who dares live South of the tracks."

Then he was gone. Veronica descended on Betty alone. She had the mild, beautiful disgruntlement that only Veronica could achieve. Somehow not grumpy at all, merely convincingly self-assured. Archie was at her heels, looking like a handsome attack dog.

"First he turns down an extremely generous offer, then he won't even talk to me?" Veronica told Betty. "You know, my patience is wearing thin. I can only offer my assistance so many times before it starts to look like Jughead would rather be homeless than reasonable."

"That's not fair," Betty protested. "V, your father is the one who moved to _make_ him homeless."

"You don't know that," Veronica snapped.

But people would. People would, once Jug published his article. Betty bit her tongue and turned to Archie, who could sometimes be counted on to be a beacon of rationality.

"You have to talk to him and get him to take Hiram's offer," Archie said. "Hiram's a good guy."

Betty's mouth dropped open.

Then she snapped it shut. Archie hadn't heard Tall Boy's confession, no one but Betty and the Serpents had, and yet as she began to explain it she realized it was fruitless. Archie had that solid do-no-wrong air he sometimes took on, the one that said less about his propensity for good or wrong and more about the fact that he was feeling confidently immovable. 

"You can't just pretend he doesn't have valid concerns. He was living on the street, at the drive-in, here in school for _months_ \--" Betty began slowly, trying to make them see.

"Yeah? And I helped him," Archie said. "And Hiram was trying to help him."

"And all the other Southsiders," Veronica said. "Daddy's _only_ condition was that Jughead not publish some hare-brained scheme he dreamed up based on the vicious gossip mill that perpetually churns against us Lodges--"

"If it's just a rumor, Veronica," Betty said, drawing herself up to her full height and looking at them both coolly, "and if your father is so eager to keep people in their homes, then _why_ would just some gossip keep him from doing that?"

Veronica reeled back slightly. Still poised. Now also beautifully offended. 

Betty turned on her heel and walked away. 

So that happened. She'd drawn battle lines between herself and her best friends. Yesterday she'd said nothing, too consumed with panic and dread. Now, she'd sprung on them that she wasn't on their side -- she was on Jughead's.

She didn't regret it. But this was to be the template for the rest of the day. Veronica was chilly and remote, and with queen bee precision maneuvered herself into place with everyone Betty wanted to confide in -- Kevin and Ethel and even Cheryl. And obviously Archie was no confidante in this. He just kept pressing the point that Hiram was wonderful, until Betty started to wonder if he'd been brainwashed or something.

Jughead's occasional presence at her side made up for it. But Jughead only shared so many classes with her. And at lunch he belonged to the Serpents, some quiet deal worked out in the wake of their transfer from the Southside. Betty still didn't know if she could really sit with them. Or if she wanted to. She'd wanted to welcome them into her life because she'd wanted to welcome him, but she didn't know if they held any appeal for her otherwise. Sweet Pea was always glowering, Fangs was the type to wear actual brass knuckles to chem class for unknown reasons, and Toni still provoked some formless jealousy in her. 

Bringing the Serpents into the body disposal plan had been proposed by somebody -- her or Jug, she couldn't remember. The frantic fear of the moment was all she remembered, that and Jughead shaking his head some twenty seconds after.

"If we drag them in," he'd said, "we're no better than Pen -- than that woman that I -- I cut."

And she'd sensed that she was encroaching on something he still couldn't talk about, something that shuttered out of him in jerky, vague phrases, as though there were lumps in his throat that prevented smooth telling of the story.

So she still didn't have all of it. And he circled from her to the Serpents all day, dropping his encounter with Hiram Lodge into Sweet Pea's ear, into Toni's. And when he was busy with this and with classes she felt discarded, not just by him but by Veronica, who could dole out the silent treatment so naturally that only you would even know she was doling it out. To everyone else she just seemed charmingly interested in other things.

It was a relief when the final bell rang. Betty launched herself out of World Religions class and went in the direction of Jughead's math class, but Ms. Digitori was still lecturing about algebra and didn't look prepared to stop just because a bell mandated that she had to set her students free. So Betty went to wait outside, by the rear yard, where she knew Jughead would know to look for her.

Jughead wasn't the only one looking for her.

"Betty," her mother hissed, pulling up in the station wagon. "Betty! Get in."

For a moment she though, _oh god. There must be another body, or Dad's come by and changed the locks on the house or something._

Alice's sharp voice cut through these doomsday predictions.

"I've found a matching carpet in Greendale."

"You what?" Betty said.

"No loose ends, remember?" Alice snapped. "There's a woman in Greendale selling a carpet identical to ours. I need you or Jughead or FP to come and help me strap it to the top of the car. Then we'll drag it out and put it in the living room. You'll need to spill milk on the southwest corner like you did when you were a kid. That stain's never come out no matter how hard I've tried, so your father's bound to be suspicious if he doesn't see it there even after a cleaning."

It was hard to know what to argue with first -- the blithe assumption that Hal would be coming back and that Alice would let him make comments about the carpet, the dig about literal spilled milk, the desire to make the Joneses arrange carpets for them when just months ago Jughead had been _Snake Plissken_ and banned from the house. Betty hardly had time to marshall her thoughts, anyway, before her mother was again saying, "Betty!" 

Veronica's voice was saying, "Betty!" too.

Betty whipped her head over her shoulder, catching sight of Veronica, a coolly displeased vision in a royal blue coat striding towards them across the football field. 

"Mom," she hissed, before Veronica arrived. "You got the Joneses to help you cover up a murder. Wasn't that enough?"

Alice regarded her like she was being unreasonable. Veronica reached them.

"Mrs. Cooper."

"Veronica."

Betty felt trapped between two distinct varieties of chilly charm, and hated it.

"We were just leaving, Ron--"

"I'll come with. Mrs. Cooper knows I'm good as gold by now, since when she was heading up the _Blue and Gold_ I did do my part to help investigate key suspects in the murder of Jason Blossom--"

Betty didn't know whether to rage at or be grateful for the reminder that her mother had tried to pin the crime on FP Jones, the man she was now carelessly using to cover up another, similar crime.

"--and I had a thought, Betty," Veronica continued. "About the _Register_ , and whether you might want to use it to, I don't know, publish a sordid something cooked up by our own local emo heartthrob?"

Veronica's gaze was frank, intelligent, and deeply no-nonsense. It made Betty rage.

"I don't know, Veronica, but I do know that--" she began, ready to retort, but her mother cut her off.

"Great. You can help us get the carpet on top of the car. That thing is heavy."

"The what?" Veronica said.

"The what?" said Betty.

But her mother had dismissed them already in favor of pulling out her cellphone. 

"The woman in Greendale who was cleaning our carpet for us," Alice said, and her flying fingers told Betty that she was probably texting this inexplicable cover story to this unfortunate woman, "reminded me that it was heavy, and that I would probably need help getting it on top of our car. I was going to ask Betty and Jughead, but Betty apparently has qualms about using her boyfriend's toothpick arms for manual labor, so--"

Veronica saw an opportunity and (foolishly, Betty thought) took it.

"I'd be happy to help, Mrs. Cooper," she said smoothly.

Alice waved at the backseat. Veronica regally walked around to the front instead. 

"I'd also like to talk to you about a little piece in the _Register_ by yours truly, about the Lodges and our return to this town we love so much, a little human interest--"

Betty was around the car and at her side in a flash.

"Do _not_ try to use my parents' paper to further the Lodge family's greedy aims, Veronica," she choked out, keeping her voice low so her mother wouldn't hear. Her fury pounded in her ears.

For a moment, Veronica looked almost genuinely hurt. Then the hurt was washed away and replaced by that old lovely coolness.

"You aren't the friend I thought you'd be, B," she said, short about it.

"Would the two of you hurry up and get in?" Betty's mother demanded.

-

The ride to and through Greendale was almost painful.

It began with a brief, enraged scuffle over the front seat -- Betty was not going to let Veronica sit there and use the time to manipulate Alice into helping the Lodges -- until Alice had banished them both to the back. Now they sat side by side and communicated their anger with perfect silence. 

Or at least they tried to. Alice not only didn't seem to notice or care that something was going on with Betty and Veronica. She also put the radio on, much louder than she normally played it, and when a horrible song about not teaching boyfriends how to dance came on, she actually said, with giddy happiness, "Ooooh, Betty, your brother loves this song!" and raised the volume.

This did not improve Betty's mood.

"Mrs. Cooper. About the _Register_ \--" Veronica tried.

"It's one of the few things that isn't your family's business yet, so it would be nice if you could keep out of it," Betty said.

Veronica turned a look of pure, beautiful venom on her. Alice raised the volume because the song was now, she explained, at "Chic's favorite part!"

Some version of this happened four or five times before Veronica stopped trying to crack the Cooper crazy, and settled back into her side of the car to stew. Betty retreated to her side, staring out of the window at the Greendale road.

She felt on alert, and the wild green overhang of Greendale forest on either side did little to calm her. There seemed to be something off about everything they passed. They passed the Deep River Laundromat, where Betty could swear there was a fox waiting coolly on the plastic chairs outside. They passed a tree that had been hung with lots of yarn to look like a massive spiderweb, as though Halloween hadn't been months ago. They passed someone walking by the side of the road who, for a single moment, looked exactly like Jason Blossom. 

They passed someone who looked almost like Chic's drug dealer.

Betty pushed herself back, horrified. She bumped into Veronica, also pushing herself back, but from the other window. For a moment, she forgot they were fighting.

"Sorry. I thought I saw--"

"I could have sworn there was this man, this man named Papa Poutine--" Veronica began.

Then they remembered they were angry at each other, and fell silent again.

"Here we are!" Alice trilled.

She turned off into a side road, taking them deeper into the forest. On either side of the road the trees were threaded with fairy lights and windchimes. Here and there, a boulder was painted with a star or a moon. Betty expected to find some kind of hippie encampment, but the dirt road became a paved road and then respectability asserted itself. The trees became ordered hedges. Alice pulled into a circular driveway with a cherub statue in the center. Betty squinted at the cherub. It seemed to have horns.

Before them was a Victorian so massive and turreted and gingerbreaded that it could easily eat Betty's house, toss back a rose pastille to chase it down, and then let out a floral-scented belch. Its wide mahogany doors looked both entrancingly pretty and deeply menacing.

A black cat watched them from the porch.

"Alice Cooper?" came a voice from within.

"Carpet cleaners of Greendale?" said Betty's mother, a little dangerously, as she let herself out of the car. 

Betty tried not to look at Veronica as they both got out, too. This place did not look like a carpet cleaning service. The woman who let herself out of the house was either a slightly old-looking young woman or an extremely young-looking older woman. She was very fair, white from her hair down to her radiant ankles, and was wearing clothes that suggested they'd interrupted her just as she'd been about to dash out to the country club.

"Yes, that's me. Come in and take a look at it. I've laid it out in the parlor. You can tell me if I got enough of that milk stain out."

Alice started. But the fair woman moved fast, so fast Betty could hardly process seeing her leave the porch and appear at Veronica's elbow. She prodded Veronica up the porch steps and did the same to Betty, until they were both inside. 

The inside defied description. It was still decidedly Victorian, with all kinds of strange wooden flourishes, carved wood and stained glass. But it had coolly plastic 60s furniture and framed portraits of celebrities like Ann-Margret. 

_To 'Brina, with all my jealousy and hate, darling_ , Ann-Margret had signed.

Betty felt herself being pulled into a parlor, but the fair woman was several feet away, pulling Veronica in. She looked at the source of her pulling. There was no source. She was simply in the parlor now. Alice had appeared there too, still looking startled. The cat was now on the windowseat, and it meowed at them.

Before them, laid out in the center of the huge room, and ringed by many other rugs and carpets of all styles, was their carpet. 

_Their_ carpet. No bloodstains. But it still had the milk stain.

"See, I think it didn't come out," said the fair woman, waving a hand. 

They all stepped onto the carpet to look at it. Or Betty and Alice did, with wide eyes. It was exactly the stain Betty had left as a child, which Alice had harangued her about periodically through the years. It looked like a heart, because this stain always had. 

Veronica had stepped onto the carpet too and was staring around at the room.

"Do you specialize in Victorian carpets? Or mid-century?" she said, with the frank confidence of someone who knew that just about any small talk, if charmingly employed, would allow you to make a good impression. "There's more styles clashing here than at a Christie's auction, if you'll pardon the comparison."

"Not at all," said the fair woman. "I didn't start out cleaning. It was more collecting. And no particular era. The thing was for them to have some provenance, some story."

"Aladdin's carpet," Alice said. 

She looked vaguely confused at having said that. Betty felt vaguely confused. Her mother wasn't normally fanciful.

But the fair woman, now settled on the windowseat with the cat, just nodded. 

"They do change the character of a room, don't they? Carpets. The right one can seem to transport you right out of your life. Take you wherever you like."

Back to a friendship with Veronica. Back to when her mother hadn't been so interested in using or hating the Joneses, as the fancy struck her. Back to when Jughead hadn't been more the Serpents' than he'd been hers. Back to -- no, not _back_ to a time when Alice hadn't been Alice, because that time had never existed, but maybe to a wholly new time, a time in which Alice was finally forced to be more honest about Alice.

Betty had no idea why she'd thought any of that. Suddenly her head hurt. She closed her eyes.

She felt like she was falling over.

-

She woke and stared up at the drafty, coffered ceiling. The house was dark. Around her, people were talking. 

None of them were Alice or Veronica, but she could pick out FP's voice, low and grim.

They had dragged him into this again. It made Betty ashamed and angry.

"--don't know who did it, Betty or the Snakesmith or this other girl," FP was saying. "But it doesn't matter! The trick is to dissolve the bodies, so there's nothing left. Not even teeth. Alright?"

Murmurs of agreement. 

_More_ people were in on this? And there were more bodies? Dread swelled up inside Betty. She screwed her eyes shut again.

A hand pushed her hair back from her face.

Why was her hair loose? 

And why did the hand feel familiar?

She opened her eyes again. Through the dark she made out the curl of dark hair, the ever-present bags under the eyes, the constellation of beauty marks. Jughead. _Jughead_. She clung to the sight of him, comforted despite everything.

"She coming to?" said Toni Topaz, her beautiful face and pink-tinged hair arriving on Jughead's heels to thoroughly ruin the scene. "Jeez, Coop, you might be badder than Sweet Pea."

Anger and confusion bubbled out of Betty, erupted. 

"Why do you hate me, Toni?" she demanded. 

Actually, she had no idea if Toni hated her, but in this moment she hated Toni.

"She doesn't hate you," Jughead said, blinking down at her. "Betty. She's one of your best friends." 

Toni didn't look remotely concerned over this bizarre statement. Maybe Toni had an imperturbable, pretty Southside calm like that. She said, "Leave her alone, Jones. She's obviously disoriented from whatever Tall Boy and Penny tried to do to her."

At the mention of _Tall Boy_ , who had no business being anywhere near his old gang, Betty struggled up. She was still in the Victorian house, she thought, because the stained glass was the same, and so were the carvings. But the panes were cracked and the carvings scratched with age, and the room was dusty and empty of furniture. There was no carpet beneath her. By the windowseat, she saw two bodies. Tall Boy's, in a pool of blood. And a blonde woman, equally mangled. Betty shrieked.

FP, who was kneeling by the bodies, looked up and held up a hand. 

"Easy," he said. "I take it you didn't do this, Betty?"

Betty opened her mouth and shut it a few times, surprise cutting off any chance of words.

FP shook his head.

"Nah, don't tell me," he muttered, wiping his mouth with a sleeve of his leather jacket. "Could have been any of you, and it's better if we don't know who did it. You or Alice or that one over there--"

He gestured at something, at a flash of royal blue to Betty's left. Veronica was laid out on the floor. Betty was relieved to see that, though she wasn't moving, her chest was rising and falling. Sweet Pea and Fangs kneeled by her head, regarding her like they didn't know what to make of her. Other Serpents Betty didn't know milled around the room.

Just beyond Veronica, someone else stirred. Betty almost couldn't tell who it was, because she wasn't wearing the pale blue twinset she'd been wearing earlier. Instead she was in mesh and leather, just a black form against the wooden floor. It was only when she shot up, with a violent shriek, that Betty could even tell who it was.

"Easy!" FP said again. Now he crouched by Alice and pushed her hair out of her face, the gesture somehow gentle. His voice, too, was gentle. "Easy. Don't know how you did it, but you got rid of them, alright? And Betty's safe. I promise. She's right there."

"Betty?" Alice said, turning a confused look on her daughter.

 _Mom doesn't know what's happening either,_ Betty realized. 

"Yo," came a cool, blank voice that Betty hated. "FP. I've got six bags of lye. Hoping that's enough."

Chic leaned in the doorframe. He didn't quite look like Chic. Chic, Betty realized, looked like he wanted to hide what he was, and this Chic wasn't hiding anything. There was a smear of something dark on his cheek and his shirt was caked in something else dark -- dirt or blood. He wore his leather jacket like he was born to it.

"Come on, Jughead," he said. "We've got body decomposition to get to."

"He doesn't have to do what you tell him," Betty snapped.

Her brain screamed, _this is our fault. Chic did this, and he's not picking it up, and now Jughead and the Serpents have to._

But Chic just laughed.

"I'm not telling him anything, Betty. He's gonna help us because he's our brother."

"That's right, boy, go on," FP said, waving Jughead off. Jughead pressed Betty into Toni's arms before rising and going to follow Chic. Betty tried to process this, and failed.

"Wha--" Alice began now, but FP just lightly touched her hair again and said, "Don't try to talk, Alice. We'll get you girls to the clinic to see if you're hurt or concussed. Or you and Betty, anyway. Don't know who that other one is."

Then, inexplicably, he pressed a kiss to the corner of Alice's mouth. Betty saw her mother's eyes widen. Betty felt her own eyes widen.

It was almost a relief when Veronica awoke and began to say, "But this doesn't make sense. This doesn't make _sense_!"


	2. A Welcome Home

It was strange how swiftly Alice took charge.

"Calm down, Betty," she kept saying. "They're going to take us to the clinic. Us and -- what was your name again?"

"Veronica," Veronica said, prompt about it. After her initial outburst she'd quieted, and was staring around at the Serpents with wide eyes. She looked to Alice again and repeated, "Veronica--"

But before she could add _Lodge_ , Alice shook her head slightly. Veronica seemed to understand that she had to change her answer. She instead said, "Cecilia. I think it's Veronica Cecilia. That's all I remember."

Alice nodded. When she next spoke she was a calm, cold version of herself, calmer and colder even than normal. She was the Alice of snapping at Polly and talking down to Betty, the Alice Betty was never sure was Alice, or merely a character.

"All _I_ remember, Veronica, is that Tall Boy tried to hurt my daughter, Betty, and you stopped him," Alice said. She said this in the same way she'd recited 'Carpet Cleaners of Greendale,' the way that made absolute lies sound natural and true.

"So this girl is on our side?" FP said, furrowing his brow.

Alice looked now to Betty, but again the look was a slight, slight thing. A signal. Betty latched onto it. Her mother's inappropriate calm, instead of unnerving her like it often did, now at least felt familiar enough to make the world more secure.

"They were holding Veronica hostage, I think," Betty said, hearing and marveling at how even-keeled her own tone was. "For money. I don't know anything else."

"Me neither," Veronica said quickly. "It's so hard to remember."

Alice said, "You're not going to get any more out of me right now, FP. My head hurts like a motherfucker--"

Betty started. Her mother hardly ever cursed like this. _Was_ this her Alice?

"--and we have bigger things to worry about."

Alice gestured at where a pair of Serpents were wrapping Tall Boy in a plastic sheet. They'd already carried out the blond woman, and their boots had tracked her blood all along the scuffed wooden floors. FP frowned. 

"Hey!" he said. "We're gonna need to do some cleanup in here. Where's Joaquin?"

"Better make sure to get the porch outside too," Alice said. "Hey, you help. And you--"

And with a series of orders like this, she managed to get the all Serpents around them -- even Toni. Jughead, and Chic -- completely focused on the cleanup. Then, swiftly, she beckoned at Betty and Veronica. The girls stared at each other. Then they scrambled over to Alice.

"Twenty minutes ago, this house had more tacky Hollywood paraphernalia and fewer gangbangers and dead bodies," Alice said, like she'd arrived at a tupperware party that had thoroughly disappointed her. "Right?"

Betty nodded, relieved. This _was_ her Alice.

"I don't understand," Veronica was saying. "That woman with the carpets. Did _she_ do this? Some kind of -- I don't know. Some kind of spell?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Alice snapped. "This is clearly some kind of mass psychosis -- FP and Jughead and the others are probably experiencing it as well. You know what did this?" She broke off and looked triumphantly nasty, the way she did when she reviewed new businesses for the _Register_ Sunday edition and found them lacking. "It's that high fructose corn syrup Pop Tate puts in those milkshakes of his. We all had those artery-clogging shakes last night, and--"

"Mom, FP and Jughead and the others don't seem to think they're experiencing psychosis," Betty put in. "Or Chic. He seems pretty comfortable, and he wasn't even with us at Pop's last night." 

Now Veronica regarded Betty. "So you are our Betty?" she asked carefully. "Because you--"

She gestured at Betty's clothes. Betty looked down. Leather and tight jeans, a shirt ripped in truly ingenious places. She fingered the material for a second, overwhelmed by confusion, before she found her voice. When she spoke, it was much to center herself as to answer Veronica's question.

"Betty Cooper of the Northside River Vixens, not the Southside Serpents, whatever I happen to be wearing, V," she confirmed. Then something else occurred to her. "Mom, did FP just _kiss_ you?"

Veronica raised a brow, because she'd been knocked out for that part. Alice blushed, which was very not Alice. Betty blinked at that blush.

"We have bigger questions!" Alice said, after a few milliseconds. "Whatever happened to get the three of us here, which probably wasn't anything as ludicrous as magic, Betty and I appear to have been recruited -- against our wills, I'm sure -- into FP's gang. And he happens to be taking liberties--"

"And Chic said Jughead was my brother," Betty said. It burbled up out of her. She hadn't wanted to say it. She hadn't really wanted to consider it. Jughead was her boyfriend. What Chic suggested seemed to cross strange lines.

But now FP appeared again in the doorway. The blood had been cleaned up, but he still began crouching down periodically to trace a finger along sections of the floorboards, like he wanted to make sure everything was dry.

They stopped talking. After a second, Alice snapped, "You're leaving fingerprints everywhere!"

His only answer was a lazy grin.

"That's my clever wife," he said. "I'll have Joaquin wipe it down again. Come on, girls. Time to go."

Then he stood and strode out, calling for Joaquin, but no sooner had he gone than Betty was whirling on her mother. Her thoughts were fraught, almost painful things, her now confusion so great that she felt like she was pulling her next word out from behind shards of glass.

" _Wife_?"

Alice looked irritated.

"That still isn't the important question," she hissed at Betty. "How we fix this is! And until we figure that out, I say we all play along and stick together, alright, Betty? Veronica?"

Betty and Veronica both nodded. Alice nodded back once, to show that she approved of them agreeing with her, and then stood. Betty did too, and helped Veronica up. They made their way outside in almost a huddle. Serpents crawled all over the dilapidated driveway, hoisting up Tall Boy and his murdered companion and dropping them into holes. Chic and Jughead did oversee the lye, and FP oversaw their overseeing. 

Toni Topaz came up to Betty, taking the porch steps two at a time. Betty stepped back. Toni stepped back with her.

"God, of course you get kidnapped by Penny Peabody on the day I lend you what I bragged was my lucky top," she murmured, running a hand comfortingly through Betty's hair.

Like they were friends. Which they weren't. Betty stared at her. In the moonlight, Toni looked as lovely as ever, but her expression -- warm instead of guarded, affectionate instead of judgmental -- was a completely foreign thing. 

"God, you are _not_ yourself, B," Toni said.

And Veronica, still at Betty's elbow, said in a choked voice, "And I guess you're _T_?"

Toni stared at her. "B and T, that's right," she said. "And that's all you're gonna get before we confirm you're not a mole or a Ghoulie, girl on a milk carton."

"She's a loose end," Betty heard FP murmur to her mother now. 

She saw Veronica stiffen, saw the fright on Veronica's face. And Alice's voice was cold when she spoke.

"A loose end we could get money for. Use your head. Look at her clothes. I say we keep her until she gets her memory back, then ask for ransom."

FP wiped the back of his mouth again. 

"Hostage situations are dicey, Alice. Better to swear her to secrecy and drop her in front of the police station."

Betty felt some strange secondhand pride at that. Jughead had always believed in his father, and maybe it was for good reason. Because whatever FP had done to contribute to Jason Blossom's death, clearly kidnapping wasn't his _first_ instinct.

Alice sounded vaguely surprised about that when she replied.

"Swear her to secrecy? You must have swallowed a kettle of stupid this morning, FP. That girl could claim me -- or my Betty -- _murdered_ somebody--"

"So we hold her for a week only, until there's nothing left of the bodies and nothing to back up her claims --"

"Excuse me," Veronica said loudly. "Hi, excuse me."

Everyone looked at her. The Serpents who were filling the holes. Jughead and Chic, from where they were hauling bags of lye back into the back of a pickup. Toni. Alice and FP and Betty. Veronica pushed her hair out of her face with one easy gesture. She looked back at them with all the fragile solemnity of a peacock that had wandered out of its garden and into a dirty field full of of ill-mannered crows.

"I'd like to get a say, since I'm the proposed hostage," she said, horribly frank about this fact. "And it's no use claiming I would never snitch on you, but you could also snitch on me, as I would also be a potential suspect for these murders, so no police station, please."

Numerous Serpent mouths dropped open. Veronica ignored them in favor of continuing bravely, breezily.

"What we have here is a situation that could easily tip over into mutual destruction, and I'd like to avoid that as much as I'm sure you would. So I second the motion to keep me and ransom me. I can't say I remember where I'm from, but the plan _would_ seem to get me back there in one place and maybe get you good fellows some compensation, so as a resolution it is -- passable. Comme ci comme ça, if you will." 

Her hands fluttered together, clasped, like she was satisfied with herself. She turned her dark eyes on FP, on Jughead and Chic, on Fangs and Sweet Pea hovering anxiously around her, looking like they wanted someone to order them to grab her. But she didn't need to appeal to them -- Alice and Betty were united, for once, in not wanting to lose Veronica to this strange new world.

"Works for me," Alice said quickly.

"I think that's a good idea," Betty said.

"So it's settled," said Veronica. "I'm your compliant hostage. Keep me in reasonably good condition, and I won't even complain."

Betty could bet that her definition of 'reasonably good condition' was different from the Serpents', but it didn't matter, because FP looked ready to argue. So did Jughead and Toni. Alice talked over all of them.

"Let's stop belaboring the point and get back to Riverdale," she said briskly. "After all, you did say you would get us to the clinic."

FP stared at her.

"Now I know there's something wrong with you," he said. "Riverdale? Alice, nobody's called our town that in fifteen years."

Alice stared at him.

"We live in Lodgeville," FP said gently. "Remember?"

-

Lodgeville must not have had a Whyte Wyrm, because once the bodies were taken care of, those Serpents who didn't make off into the night collected at a shady dive just on the Greendale side of the bridge, a place called Byrdie's.

It was painted in varying shades of pink, each a shade that could best be described as nauseous. Pictures of pinup girls adorned the walls, alternating with framed Thomas Kinkade Christmas landscapes. A single air conditioner stuttered freezing air into the room, in defiance of the fact that it was winter. Fangs, Sweet Pea, Toni, and Jughead collected by the jukebox like birds arriving at their favorite telephone line.

"B," Toni said, when it seemed that Betty was going to linger at the table with Alice and FP and Veronica. Betty felt her heart twist up at how Jughead wasn't the one to say it. Jughead wasn't even looking at her -- he was arguing with Fangs about music or something.

Then Veronica's hand closed on Betty's. The plea was clear.

_I don't know what's happening either. Please don't leave me._

"I -- Veronica needs me," Betty said, for lack of anything better to say.

All of the teenage Serpents stared at her in shock.

After a second, though, Jughead detached himself from the group and took the seat next to Betty, on the other side from Veronica. Betty felt a weight leave her. She hadn't dared look at him since Chic had said that word, _brother_ , because so much was different here in Lodgeville. What if Jughead was different too? What if Jughead looked at her differently?

She glanced at him. He wasn't looking at her at all, but at her mother and FP, and she felt her frustration climb. Maybe not even frustration at him, maybe merely frustration _over_ him. This Jughead wasn't her Jughead, and that was infuriating.

But then he curled a hand around her free hand. Betty gratefully clasped his palm, feeling the soft leather of his fingerless gloves.

Only, maybe this was what real brothers, not Chic-like ones, just did for you. Or maybe, she thought hopefully, _brother_ and _wife_ were just affectionate gang terms.

"Well, where do we keep you?" FP said, taking a swig of his beer. He swirled it around in his mouth like mouthwash before swallowing. Alice broke character long enough to stare at this, disturbed. 

"I'm sure you could find some not completely disgusting safehouse," Veronica suggested. "Perhaps one that even has a bathroom. A clean bathroom," she added hastily.

"Would you like your own butler and maid, princess?" Alice said, falling back into character as her usual unforgiving self. "We can't let you out of our sight. I suggest she stays with us."

Veronica's grasp became looser, like this wasn't such a bad plan to her. But FP almost choked on his beer.

"With _us_?"

"Did I stutter?" Alice said.

"Alice," Jughead said, sounding disbelieving. Now his face was twisted up in that angry look he'd had more and more over the last few months, the look Betty hated to see on him. "You _hate_ when me or dad brings anyone home, and that's us. That's Serpents. You wouldn't even let Toni stay more than two nights--"

"And after all the hell you gave me over our last houseguest --" FP put in.

Now Chic came by. Betty hadn't even noticed that he'd been gone, mostly because he didn't deserve her notice. He dropped gracelessly into the chair between Alice and Veronica.

"Your last houseguest blew up in our faces, FP," he said, pointing his own beer at FP before taking a swig himself.

"Boy, I am your _father_ \--"

"Stepfather," Chic corrected.

"Only damn father you've ever had!"

The entire exchange left Betty's heart sinking. She didn't know whether to tighten her grip on Jughead or pull her hand away. Jughead decided it for her, by tapping lightly at her fingers with his free hand, like he could sense her upset. She snuck another look at him. He still wasn't looking at her. 

"Fine, if you like. The other one wasn't much use to me," Chic was saying. "What are we talking about? Mom?"

"Veronica Cecilia, our new houseguest," Alice said. 

Chic eyeballed Veronica. Betty was proud of her for only looking coolly back at him.

"Veronica's going to stay with us, Chic," Betty put in now. "With me, if she wants. In my room."

She could feel Jughead and FP's shocked gazes on her. She swallowed.

Chic looked at her. Then, after half a second, he threw back his head and started laughing.

"Oh, shit," he said. "Oh shit, oh shit. You'd better remember where you come from soon, Veronica Cecilia."

"Chic," Jughead said, his voice ugly with warning.

"What?" Chic said, his head snapping back again, his horrible features, so like her mother's and yet far more repulsive, still distorted with mirth. "Come on. It's the perfect plan. Making our hostage room with the single most certifiably crazy member of the Cooper-Smith-Jones clan? Brava, Betty. Brilliant. You'll have her too scared to snitch."

Betty stared at him.

"Excuse me?" Veronica said stiffly.

Chic put his beer down and looked at her, then around at all of them, gaze unimpressed.

"Come on," he said. "Be serious. We all know who was the most likely to have offed Penny and Tall Boy. Betty!"

Alice made a choked noise, and Veronica looked unconvinced, but Betty wasn't looking at them. She was looking at Jughead, at FP. At the teen Serpents not so far away, but suddenly far too absorbed in their jukebox. 

FP took a swig of his beer and said nothing. Jughead's hand tightened on hers, but he didn't contradict Chic either.

-

They managed to keep up the charade all through an awkward dinner of burgers at Byrdie's, and a stop at a dingy Greendale clinic where everyone was pronounced probably fine and offered some ibuprofen. Then FP decided they would head home. Him and Alice, and their new hostage, Veronica. 

But there seemed to be some question about what to do with Betty.

"Coop," Sweet Pea said, as she was about to get into the back of FP's truck with Chic and Veronica. "What -- no night haunts tonight?"

Betty stared at him. He was looking expectantly at her, and so was Fangs. Jughead and Toni lingered by the stoop to the clinic, watching this. Betty realized that whatever the dynamic was here, it seemed to hinge on her in some critical way. 

Her, a Southside Serpent. Best friends with Toni Topaz. And a girl who people thought had _killed_ somebody, apparently. She didn't want to think about that last thing, but it kept looming, making her dig her nails into her palms. She breathed out and released her fingers, trying to stay away from the thought, to stay in the moment. _Play along_ , her mother had said. 

"Toni?" she tried. "Are you--"

Coming? Staying? If B and T were a team, this had to be the right move. The right move couldn't be to ask Jughead. They weren't dating here, in this world. So she had to build to asking about what _he_ would be doing tonight.

"I'm just sticking around to make sure you're okay," Toni said, with a wave. "I'm gonna hit up my grandpa for the night. He's back in town. Besides, your mom doesn't like me spending the night at your place. You know that."

Fangs smirked into his collar for some reason. Jughead rolled his eyes.

"Oh," Betty said. Maybe she'd been supposed to care about what would become of Toni. But she hadn't really been inquiring after Toni.

"Betty, get in the car," her mother said now, sharp about it.

"Alice, you know you're not gonna get that girl to come home until she damn well wants to," FP began, but Betty _did_ want to go home with them. Wherever home was. It was where her mother and Veronica would be, her anchors to a world that made more sense. She pulled herself up into the truck. 

Jughead stood, dusting off his jeans. 

_Come too_ , Betty thought at him.

"I'll come too," he decided.

Relief washed over her. 

"All the clan," Chic muttered, from where he'd been assigned to watch Veronica . "All the clan left in town will be with you to welcome to your new home, princess. Aren't you lucky?"

Veronica smoothed down her fine satin skirt.

"Let's just get one thing clear, girl," she told Chic frostily. "You are my least favorite."

Chic's only answer was to crack a nasty grin at her. Annoyed, Betty shoved him aside and put herself between them. Jughead took Veronica's other side as FP started the truck and they left the other Serpents behind.

The night was clear and cold, and colder once FP hit the gas pedal. Betty's hair whipped around her face, and she hunted fruitlessly in her leather jacket for a hair band, finding none. When she managed to get her hair out of her face, she found that they'd cleared the Greendale bridge. The Southside church loomed to their right, and beyond it -- 

Towers. Towers that didn't belong there. Betty stared at them. They were so ill-suited to the little town roofs around them that they were a fright. And there were no lights on in any of the windows, so that all that stone seemed pockmarked by dark, malevolent slashes. Betty tried to think of what had been there before.

Southside High. And the drive-in. And Sunnyside trailer park.

"What is that?" Veronica said, pointing at the complex.

"What?" Chic said, looking carelessly over his shoulder. "Oh. SoDale. Sweet SoDale. No place like it. You should explore it sometime."

"You should _not_ ," Jughead put in firmly.

"It isn't up yet!" Veronica said. "It isn't completed--"

"It was completed over ten years ago," Jughead said. His brows were knit together, his mouth a puzzled frown. "Come on. You don't know SoDale? Hiram Lodge's first great venture into real estate? He built the complex, but pulled out of the project before it tanked. Made millions, bilking his investors and leaving plenty of local residents homeless, but hey--" he held up one long finger, as though he were telling a bedside story, "--we get a great view."

"And now that it's totally abandoned, the local junkies get a place to roam free," Chic added.

Veronica's face was white. Up until now, she'd found a way to clasp Betty's hand again, and it had been a reminder that whatever was happening, they were in it together. 

But now the fight between them resurfaced. Veronica pulled her hand back. When Betty stared at her, Veronica's eyes were accusing for some reason.

Betty didn't know why. 

"Hiram Lodge built those towers," she told Veronica.

Not Betty.

"Thank you so much for the cautionary tale," Veronica snapped.

Then silence reigned. Betty looked miserably past Veronica, at Jughead, but he was examining the shabby houses on the side of the road, not looking back at her. There was a palpable sense of distance between her and this Jughead. It made Betty feel sick. 

"So where does your uniquely blended family live?" Veronica bit out now. "Not in SoDale, I assume."

Chic just leaned back, dangling his head crazily off the side of the truck, his longish blonde hair whipping around worse than Betty's. He jerked a thumb in the direction they were going, and Betty turned and saw Fox Forest opening up before them. After FP banged the window to get Chic to sit up, he pulled the truck onto the forest road. Betty frowned.

The last time she'd taken this road, the Black Hood had sent her here. To the childhood home of Joseph Svenson. But FP swerved left before they got there, down a small access road, and brought them to a much more modest dwelling. Just as old, but hung with twinkling christmas lights no one appeared to have bothered to take down. It had peeling siding and a rotting veranda. FP pulled into a carport a little ways off and then came around to help Veronica down, oddly gentlemanly about it.

"Gonna have to cuff you to the spare bed in Betty's room," he told her, almost apologetically.

" _Cuff_?" Veronica said.

She looked around at them all, trying to make an appeal. But Chic was grinning and Jughead was quiet. Alice got out now and said, "Yes, Veronica Cecilia. Cuff. You _are_ a hostage," in the same cold tones she'd used ever since they'd found themselves here. 

Now Veronica turned to Betty, but Betty felt--

Grey. Dissatisfied. Pinned, still. And it was all worse now; the crazy sudden shift in the very universe had made it worse.

"You're a hostage," Betty echoed. "You get cuffed, Veronica."

She was expecting Veronica to look chilly, but Veronica didn't. She just looked hurt, which was somehow worse. FP tugged her away towards the house, carefully, like he was handling a kitten that might scratch. Alice and Chic followed after, with Alice shooting a significant look at Betty to not fall behind.

But as she shimmied to the edge of the truck to climb down, Jughead's hand closed on her wrist. His fingers were cold, but the leather of his gloves was warm. Betty felt like something in her had been released. Finally, finally she turned around to look at him directly.

"I'm sorry," he choked out.

It was somehow the most Jughead thing he could have said, even if she had no idea of the context. It told her that, whatever the connection between them in this world, this wasn't _not_ her Jughead. 

Her Jughead, after all, wore plenty of leather too these days.

"What are you sorry for?" Betty asked him.

He grimaced.

"Betts-- Coop. Look. Whatever happened with Penny and Tall Boy, I know it was because I didn't listen to your mom, okay? I should have listened. But they had dad in lockup, and I worried he'd been hurt."

He bit his lip and shoved his beanie back with one hand, almost like he wasn't aware he was doing it. Betty was reminded of that moment after Veronica's confirmation, when he'd sounded so despairing, so terrible and tender at the same time.

"I hope you didn't get rid of Penny to solve my problems," he said. "And if you did -- I know, I _know_ it's because of me. And I take responsibility. Okay?"

She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what he was talking about. 

"Okay," she said, a little helplessly.

Jughead crouched on the truck next to her, gritting his teeth for a few moments. Betty watched the way his adam's apple bobbed, the movements of his neck, how the shadows in the carport connected his birthmarks. She wanted to reach out and trace them, but didn't know if it would be appropriate. Her hands, sitting uselessly in her lap, ached like they understood her desire to touch him.

"After my mom and JB left," he said. "I thought nothing would ever be okay. Then you moved in. I haven't regretted having you here, Betty. I've always been glad to have you as my stepsister."

It was an unseasonably warm winter here in Lodgeville, but Betty felt instantly chilled, chilled down to her bones.

-

Her room was narrow and low-ceilinged, with wood-paneled walls and a cheap red vanity plastered with pictures of herself and the young Serpents. One of its twin beds was just a mattress on a boxspring. The other had an ugly white headboard, and it was to this that Veronica had been cuffed. She'd also changed, or been changed, into loose pajama pants and one of Jughead's S t-shirts. The effect was startling, not Veronica at all. 

But the air of hurt, prim hostility? That was very Veronica.

Betty sighed. 

“V,” Betty began, not sure how to explain or even begin, but aware that she had to try. 

Alice’s arrival cut her off. Betty’s mother was still in mesh and leather, but the frantic push to lock the door and press her back against it, like she was cornered and affronted about being cornered, was all regular old Alice. 

“Finally, we’re alone,” she told both girls. “Fine. Maybe that Greendale witch did do this to us with her wishing carpet. I knew we shouldn't have trusted her."

Betty held off on pointing out that Alice had brought them to her. Alice didn't look ready to hear it. Her mouth was a thin, furious line.

She said, "Betty? Veronica? When I find out which of you wished us here, it is _not_ going to be pretty.”


	3. Fevers at Breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating is going up right now. Just a warning! Or an advertisement. Depends on the reader, I guess.

Alice knew perfectly well who had wished them here. 

She’d wanted to keep her son, maybe even to have raised him. To not be in theses messes with Hal or with that decomposing body. To feel again, for a moment, FP Jones’ hand on hers. 

Only that last wish shouldn’t have counted. It was a throwaway wish, signifying nothing. It was not the wish that carpet should have focused on. And yet that night, after she changed into a nightgown much shorter and less tasteful than her usual, it was FP she stretched out next to. 

It wasn’t like she'd spent hours thinking about this. She hardly thought about it at all. She didn’t want the squalor of FP’s life, the violence, the flashes of reckless stupidity. The man had dumped a body for her, yes, or possibly for her daughter and his son, but any romantic interpretation of that warred with the overwhelming stupidity of it. Had their positions been reversed, Alice would never have done the same for him. So there could be no question that she’d never wanted to end up married to FP. 

But the ring on her finger was smaller and cheaper than the one Hal had given her. When she tugged it off and examined it under the bedside table lamp, she found it carved with a small pair of snakes. And instead of the large, cool room she shared with Hal, she was crammed into a room the size of the Cooper pantry, wainscoted within an inch of its life, with windows draped in curtains that had gone out of fashion thirty years ago and that maybe had last been cleaned then. The mattress was smaller and lumpier, too. Alice thought, grimly, _this is what failure looks like. This._

Then FP shifted in his sleep. His side brushed hers. She felt the touch ripple through her like a current. 

Alright, so she had thought about this. 

Only every now and then, though. And never accurately, never capturing how the closeness could hit her in a glorious crash. At home, Hal had his side of the bed, and she had hers, and crossings without prior notice to her at least four days in advance were more or less discouraged. So now this accidental touch felt both surprising and somehow thirst-quenching. Only it was a thirst she hadn't wanted to admit she'd had in the first place.

She slept badly, like a woman ill. Every sudden brush of skin on skin woke her completely. For half the night she clenched her fists together, annoyed, or rummaged through the night table half-hoping to wake him, or got up and pulled the cord on the ceiling fan to make it go faster. 

Just as it became light, FP rolled onto his back. His face was turned away still, so it seemed almost safe to lightly float her fingers along his chest. FP had grabbed her hand back at Pop's, after all. And she kept her touch light, light. She felt almost mischievous about it, as though it were something no one needed to know about.

His hand closed on hers. He brought her fingers to his lips. She should have felt captured and she didn't, instead she felt like there was an absurd singing in her ears, a tune she knew but had forgotten the words to.

He said, sleepily, "You're feeling better. Before breakfast, why don't I--"

"Yes," she said immediately, the word crisp as a bell in the morning silence.

Why don't I what? Why didn't he _what_? She just wanted to know. She was instantly overcome by anticipation. This FP was all naked planes and shadows, his hair falling into his eyes, his hands rubbing the sleep away. Alice looked from the stubble on his jaw (on a whim, she put out a hand and rubbed at it, and he didn't complain) down to the waistband of his boxers. Would he--

He pushed her hips down gently and got between her legs. 

Oh. Alright then.

She felt like both explorer and explored, letting him lift up the cheap cotton of her nightgown, lifting her hips so that he could get her underwear off. He was still rubbing at his eyes periodically, still coming out of sleep, and Alice marveled at the fact that _this_ was what he wanted to do. 

Well. She did remember him being kind of good at it.

He definitely started off strong: first fingers, then tongue. Then just tongue, as his hand snaked down into his boxers. Alice got up on her elbows to watch him. The pool of warmth he was bringing out of her felt better, felt more urgent, when she caught those glimpses of his hands working himself. She liked that. He wasn't bad to look at -- that had never been FP's problem. 

When she was panting hard, she reached down and got a hand in his hair to help guide him. He just made a kind of hum against her skin that left her gasping. When he did it again, she locked her legs around him on instinct, trying to draw more out of him, not caring about the odd position. Her want was like a living thing now. He'd always been _kind_ of good, but this time he was blowing right past that kind of, straight into uncharted territory. When she came, she pulled his hair so hard in triumph that it had to hurt.

Then she stared up at the ceiling fan, boneless, feeling every inch a winner despite her ugly surroundings, while he finished himself off.

"Not bad," she said, when she thought he was done. "I guess you earned me cooking breakfast."

FP snorted, and she felt his weight leave the bed. Heard him moving around by the cheap dresser near the window.

"Alice, you never cook breakfast," he said.

That made no sense. Alice shot upright. But FP already had a pair of jeans and an undershirt on, and was heading out into the hall.

-

In the sunny, sparkling Cooper kitchen, preparing breakfast was an elaborate ritual that meant Alice started every day with purposeful anxiety, timing everything right -- the coffee, the eggs, the bacon, the pancakes, the fruit salad. The orange juice had to be loaded with the proper amount of ice cubes at the proper time, and left to water down until it was more pleasantly sweet than tangy. Hal's medicines had to go by the bacon, to entice him to take them. Betty's food had to go out first, because she was an early riser. Then, when all was done and Alice's stress winding down, she could enjoy a cup of coffee while the others ate, before the marathon rush of gathering plates and pitchers and cleaning them, and shoveling uneaten food into the trash. 

None of this was a pleasant routine, but what routine was? And this one made Alice critical, indispensable. Without her to oversee it, it was likely that Hal and Polly wouldn't eat at all, and Betty would only have cereal. 

Her kitchen here was neither sunny nor sparkling. Those ugly curtains repeated themselves, this time framing the window above an ancient sink. The cabinets were an abominable dark wood. The countertops were cheap, and there were nowhere near enough of them to accommodate both Jughead and Chic as they buttered toast and poured Choc-o-flakes, squabbled for possession of the milk carton and then -- with uneasy glances at FP, who was flipping a pan onto the stove -- conceded to pour their milk into bowls and glasses. 

"Who had eggs last night?" FP demanded. "We had a full dozen yesterday."

"Me," Jughead admitted.

"Boy, there'd better be enough to go around for the rest of us."

"There are," Jughead insisted.

FP caught sight of Alice watching. 

"Honey," he said, the word strangely smooth on his tongue, "pull up."

He meant at the alcove just off the kitchen, where six vinyl seats were clustered around a scratched wooden table, beneath a green glass lamp that had probably been considered hideous even when it had been manufactured in the sixties. Alice took a seat gingerly. From here, she could look out on their shag-carpeted living room, adorned with the most unglamorous fireplace she'd ever seen. There was also a dirty, narrow sunroom just beyond, piled high with too much junk for her to remain quiet about it for a single minute. 

"That room needs cleaning," she decided. She got up, prepared to descend upon the sunroom with a degree of implacable fury she only reserved for Tuesday bathroom-cleaning sessions at the Cooper house.

"Boy!" FP said again, without looking up from his eggs. "I told you she would want you to clean it."

It was unclear which boy he was speaking to. Jughead only sighed, while Chic immediately said, "You never make _Betty_ clean."

That was certainly unfair if it was true, and a clever enough resolution, Alice thought.

"Good thinking. Betty can do it," she told Chic, prodding a smile from him.

But Jughead drew himself up now.

"Why does she have to do it? You always act like she's the problem."

FP, meanwhile, just snorted again.

"I'd like to see you try and force her anyway, Alice. That girl's worse than you."

Alice was affronted. She'd never been half as bad as a girl as FP made her out to be. Anxious, maybe. Eager to please, like Betty. And Betty was better than her, not worse. Better because she often _did_ please. Alice had raised her that way, without a hint of wildness. 

Now she said so.

Chic put down the milk carton he'd been trying to sneak a swig from. Jughead put down his cereal spoon. FP pulled away from his eggs long enough to stare at Alice over his shoulder. 

"Mom," Chic said slowly. "She's _all_ wildness."

The object of conversation chose this moment to walk in, blinking back sleep.

"FP?" she said. "Somebody needs to free Veronica. She has to pee. And my phone--" she produced a cheap phone Alice had never seen before, and, from the way Betty held it, possibly she had never seen before either, "--says it's Monday. So is she going to stay here while Jug and I go to school, or...?"

Chic choked on his milk.

"Betty," Jughead said, abandoning his cereal again. "You're going to school? You actually want to go to school today?"

Betty stared at him.

"Yes," she said, with a look that communicated that everyone around her was perhaps experiencing some kind of mental break.

"Oh my god," Chic muttered. "Who got rid of Harley Quinn and gave us this?"

Jughead shot him a dirty look.

FP was now doling eggs out onto plates. He let three clatter on the table, one in front of Alice, before backtracking and pulling something out of a nearby drawer. A thermometer. 

“Your mom’s fine, but you’ve gotta be sick,” he told Betty. 

Betty looked at Alice. Alice coughed, “play along,” into her hand. It probably wouldn’t help them fit into this world if Betty didn’t play along. 

Then Alice took a bite of her eggs. They were very good. 

FP, meanwhile, was hovering near Betty. 

“I bet you have a fever. Just lift your tongue up.”

Then, strangely, “Please?”

Alice put her fork down. 

FP Jones was a hardened criminal, and had been since he’d started stealing hubcaps for attention at thirteen. He could drink like a madman and fight like one. He could give the most rousing gang speeches Alice had ever heard, speeches that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, speeches full of nonsense if you actually stopped and listened to them, but you wouldn’t, because he had buckets of bizarre charm. In the sordid shadow world of the Southside, FP had been nimbly able to climb to the top, a perverse king. 

But now he regarded Betty — _Betty_ — like if he said the wrong thing, she might scratch him in the eye. 

When she obediently lifted her tongue, he was clearly shocked. But he slipped the thermometer in anyway. FP was never one to fight good providence. Gangland leadership aside, it had always come to him pretty rarely. 

“Jug,” he said. “Keep an eye on her. I’ll go get our hostage.”

He headed for the bedrooms, leaving Betty to take a seat next to Alice. 

“You’re going to school,” Alice told her in an undertone, in case she got ideas. 

Betty gave a muffled, _Mom! I know!_

Chic and Jughead watched this as though fascinated. 

After some noise from the hall, and the sounds of someone using the bathroom, FP came back with Veronica walking carefully before him, hands cuffed together. She had the look of a sultan’s daughter about to walk the plank. Alice was unimpressed by this. It was a Lodge trait to look like that in the face of adversity — Veronica’s mother was the same. 

Anyway, this was no real adversity. FP directed her to one of the chairs and gave her one of his plates of eggs, so it wasn’t like they were starving her. Veronica balanced her fork delicately and ate with tiny bites, showing no emotion. Her blankness somehow condemned them all more than any hysteria would have. Alice rolled her eyes at it. 

Veronica wasn’t really a hostage. But she, Betty, and Alice had entered this mess together, so it made sense to stay together until they got out of it. Alice leaned over and whispered, “If you’d rather we send you to your parents, Betty and I can just figure out a way back to our world.”

Veronica shot her a dirty look. And Betty, ever unclear about where she stood, actually spit out her thermometer. 

“Mom!” she hissed, like she was chastising Alice. 

“What?” Alice asked. 

She thought it had been kind to devise a way to keep Veronica with them. Veronica wasn’t her daughter. It wasn’t like Alice was responsible for her. 

Now FP, who had been rummaging around in the fridge, noticed that the thermometer was out. When Betty meekly put it back in her mouth, he shook his head like he wasn’t sure what the world was coming to, but didn’t complain. He brought some juice over for himself, Alice, and Veronica, and then settled in to eat himself. 

His hand found Alice's hand. Alice regarded it, and wondered at how she had no inclination to shove it off. 

When Betty’s thermometer beeped and declared her perfectly healthy, all three of the men exchanged looks. 

“Concussion,” Chic said. “Or psychosis,”

“This isn’t a B-movie, Chic,” Jughead said testily, as though this wasn't the kind of thing Jughead himself muttered about all the time. “Betty, you don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to. You know that.”

“But I want to!” Betty said. 

Alice was about to cut in with some very harsh words about truancy, but Veronica, ever eager to bring attention to herself, cut her off. 

“What about me?” she said quickly. “What happens to me while Betty’s at school? Also I’d rather have a _cafe con leche_ instead of juice. That's a very strong coffee with about a one-to-one ratio of warm milk and some sugar on the side.”

Everyone stared at her. Alice decided something. 

“While Betty’s at school, you earn your keep,” she said. “The sunroom needs cleaning.”

“ _What_?” Veronica shrieked. 

“Mom!” Betty said again. 

"There goes the wicked stepmother," Jughead muttered.

Alice ignored them. FP was being so -- so oddly not annoying, so strangely suited to family life, so good at oral sex, that she mistrusted him. Too much of a good thing. She appealed to Chic instead.

"We have some rope or chains to secure her, right? So you can watch her while she cleans. Done! It's the perfect plan."

"I am not Cinderella!" Veronica snapped.

"Jug," Betty began, appealing to her boyfriend.

Only wait. No. _Not_ her boyfriend. Alice chewed her eggs and felt uncomfortable for a few seconds, as she began to really consider the implications of this universe. This gave the children the in they needed, as Jughead and Betty were now able to swoop in.

"Mom, you can't make her clean," Betty insisted.

"Yeah, she's not our slave," said Jughead.

Veronica looked surprised that he'd spoken up for some reason, and then less surprised and more sulky, probably because she was a sulky type.

Jughead continued.

"Anyway, Sweets was suspended, so he's free today. He needs a few bucks to cover his water bill. If you pay him, he'll clean it."

Alice had no idea which one of his little Serpent friends Sweets was -- the large hooligan, the toothy one, or the girl a nunnery probably couldn't redeem -- but it didn't matter. FP was already speaking up. 

"That's good," he said. "Serpents gotta look out for each other. And we can spare a few bucks -- me and Alice have a big deal to work out today."

Alice barely had time to work out this alarming fact before Veronica was piping in again.

"Oh, so you're _accepting_ deals now?"

This made no sense to anyone but Betty, who now said, "Shut up, Veronica."

Veronica turned to her very deliberately, with all the pampered menace of a beloved poodle preparing to fight a new kitten for its owner's attention. Betty just stared at her. Alice put her fork down again, ready to intervene in what was doubtlessly the stupidest fight of the century, even if the boys looked relieved at this new, more aggressive Betty.

Then a few knocks forestalled even that. 

Two of Jughead's friends. Sweets was the especially untrustworthy-looking one, and it was only by reminding herself that this wasn't really her home that Alice was able to keep from protesting FP's offer of payment for cleaning the sunroom. The other, the girl, sidled up to Betty and began talking to her like they were old friends. Though Betty appealed to her mother with her eyes to intervene, Alice almost decided to let her take this on her own, to teach her survival skills. But then Jughead's harlot friend pulled up close and whispered something into her ear.

Whatever it was, Betty looked astonished at it.

"Care to share with the class?" Alice said sharply.

The girl looked up. "Easy, snakesmith," she said, rolling her eyes. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna make out with your daughter again."

"What?" Veronica said.

" _What_?" said Betty.

The girl looked unrepentant, despite this heinous declaration. Alice, despite misgivings, shot a look at Jughead. He appeared very interested in the ugly kitchen countertop. Alice was about to snap at him to say something, to fight for his girlfriend, but then it hit her again--

Right. Not his girlfriend. Because Alice was married to his father.

And, horribly, she didn't feel the slightest bit bad about it.

Now the man in question spoke up.

"Come on, Alice," he said. "Leave the kids alone. We've got work to do, so we'd better get showered and changed."

-

In the bathroom, an ugly mid-century nightmare tiled floor-to-ceiling in olive green, with an olive green tub and sink and toilet, it hit Alice that apparently this universe's Betty was bisexual.

_This_ universe's Betty. She would have known if _her_ Betty was. She knew everything about her Betty. It wouldn't make sense for her Betty to want to run around kissing girls, and for Alice not to know about it.

That settled it. All was well. She wouldn't think of it anymore.

She tried the taps in the shower. 

Ice-cold water rushed out, no matter how hot she tried to make it. She frowned. This was why she'd hated the Southside. The ugliness. The inconvenience. Even more than the violence and danger, this had grated on her, all of it such a small, unending series of assaults, wearing her down through a succession of shabby rooms, dirty houses, and always-cold showers. 

The door creaked open. FP edged his way into the tiny room, peeling off his undershirt as he did, and caught sight of her standing there with one hand under the spray, looking dissatisfied.

"Give it a sec," he said mildly.

"If you're not going to warm it up, don't tell me what to do," Alice snapped at him, suddenly irritated. 

He grinned.

"Oh, I'll warm you up," he said, and then his arms were around her waist, and his mouth was pressing kisses along her collarbone.

It felt -- nice. It was sudden in a good way, particularly when he reached down beneath her robe and pressed his fingers in right where he needed to.

She hadn't felt like this since before Polly left for good, before Betty started defying her at every turn. Since before she lost Chic. Since a dangerous time. Since years ago, when she was a girl on the Southside, and wrapped up in FP Jones like this. This was why she'd wanted to keep him at arms' length, and manipulate him, and judge him, and hate him. This.

Already she was forgetting how much she hated everything around them. Because she had him.

_I don't_ want _to want him_ , she thought, to make herself feel better about what they were doing.

But, as her wish attested, that wasn't strictly true either.


	4. The Tiger

Veronica had wished to find common ground with Betty again. To have a friend again. And, if possible, to turn that to her and her family's advantage.

She hadn't realized that their common ground would come in the form of mutual hatred for Chic. An Adonis he was not. He was a regular Ace Merrill. He was maybe a few years away from serving his whole family maggots masquerading as spaghetti.

When everyone left -- FP and Alice for whatever gang business FP Jones wasted all his time on, Betty and Jughead and Toni Topaz for school -- that left Veronica with Sweet Pea, Jughead's tall friend, and with Chic. Chic let her use the bathroom like he was doing her a favor, cuffed her to a pipe in the sunroom, told Sweet Pea to watch her, and then vanished. 

So she sat on a chair that was sadly ejecting springs and upholstery, toe rubbing at the dirty tile floor of the sunroom, and watched Sweet Pea clean. Mostly, he was attempting to impose order on a boundless sea of junk: upended coffee tables, worn suitcases, flowerpots full of dead plants. He handled it all like it had value, with a firm respect, which Veronica supposed gave him a certain something.

But she wasn't interested in _him_. She had more on her mind.

It was clear that she had landed them all here. In addition to wishing for peace with Betty on her own terms, she'd also wished that everyone could see what her father could bring to the Southside.

Potential, she'd thought. Potential. He'd been willing to pay for Jughead's rent, after all. He'd been willing to keep them all in their homes. Something must have gone wrong in this world too. They must have refused a deal again, refused to negotiate.

Right?

Even though that had to be it, the sinister towers of SoDale played in her mind. It made no sense that no one lived there. Surely owning a successful commercial complex would bring daddy more money than just ruining other people's finances, taking what he could, and then -- what? Pulling some tax scheme involving the blighted property? Filing for pretend bankruptcy? She furrowed her nose, thinking. After a second, she hooked a foot around a dusty crate of records and pulled it towards herself, so that she could prop her feet up and get comfortable while the tried to consider all the possibilities. 

There had to be one angle from which her father's actions made sense.

She was still puzzling when Sweet Pea made it to her side of the room, so she hardly noticed him.

"Move," he said.

"What?" said Veronica. 

"Your foot. _Move_."

Affronted, she put it down so that he could dust the crate. He did so with a wet rag that was fast becoming deeply grimy, and an odd maniacal gleam in his eyes. He wasn't a bad picture by any means, aside from how dirty his hands and forearms were at this point, but now Veronica watched him mostly because there seemed to be nothing better to watch. 

"Tell me something, Sweet Pea," she said after a few minutes. "Tell me about Lodgeville. How did it get its name?"

They wouldn't name a town after the Lodges if the Lodges hadn't done something good for the town. Right?

Sweet Pea straightened up and looked at her almost disdainfully.

"Well. Senator Lodge and his mafia own this town, so you tell me."

"What?" Veronica said.

It was _Senator_ she was asking about, but Sweet Pea sighed, sat back on his heels, examined his filthy arms, and after a second stripped off his sleeveless flannel overshirt and began trying to combat the dirt on himself.

"You didn't know Senator Lodge had mob connections?"

She knew that. She'd always known that. It didn't have to be a bad thing, either. The Family weren't thugs. They had a code of honor. They struck only when honor demanded it, like in the case of Nick St. Clair.

"Senator?" she prompted instead.

"Yeah," said Sweet Pea, still absorbed in cleaning himself up. "He's mostly out of town, but he has a big mansion here. Lodgeville is where he made his name. Place used to be called Riverdale before he got to it."

Then he paused, as if considering something.

"No. The place used to be called Datsiyi or something like that. But Toni could tell you more about that than me. That's Uktena stuff."

He seemed to give up on cleaning himself because he was mostly smearing dirt around, and so now he stood and stalked off. Veronica heard the water running in the kitchen and the sound of cabinets opening. When he came back, it was with more rags and a half-empty bottle of cleaning liquid so old the label was peeling off. His forearms and hands were clean now, though.

"I want to go to SoDale," she told him.

She needed to see it. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Sweet Pea crossed his arms and stared down at her. His eyes raked up and down her form, but not in a way that suggested he was remotely impressed. 

"No," he said plainly. "You don't."

"Yes, I do!" she said. "I'm sure it's nice. I'm sure it's fine--"

"Cecilia Veruca?" Sweet Pea said. "Or whatever your name is? If you're looking for a hideout upgrade, look somewhere else. Most of those condos don't have floors or walls anymore. The whole place was built cheap, and it rotted fast. FP could tell you more. He used to know the poor sucker Hiram Lodge hired to build those condos."

Fred. Fred Andrews. Archie's father. Oh, god, _Archiekins_.

It had been twenty-four hours and she hadn't even thought of him. And now the words _poor sucker_ were drilled into her brain. Where was Archie in this world? What had happened to him?

"Poor sucker?" she said, hating how small her voice sounded.

Sweet Pea sighed again. He picked up the crate and moved it to a wall he'd begun to stack junk on, everything stacked like some kind of crazy, careful variant of tetris. Then he picked up his new rags and the cleaning liquid and began to attack the many windows of the sunroom. The cloying, antiseptic smell of the liquid filled the room. Sweet Pea spoke as he worked.

"That guy, well. He was like all the guys who did business with Lodge, FP said. In over his head. And he cut corners, or maybe Lodge encouraged him to. And hired people he could pay under the table. And bought cheap lumber. Everything to save money. Who knows if Lodge ever planned to have people live there anyway? It was a way for Lodge to write off costs on his taxes or something. _I_ don't know. I don't know how how rich people work.

"Hardly anybody moved in anyway. Nobody _wants_ to move out here. This town is nowhere. But Lodge, he pulled out before the few people who did move in started suing for the poor quality of the construction. They ended up suing the construction company instead, not Lodge. And the building -- it's fallen apart by now. Only junkies live there."

Veronica's heart by now was pounding. She thought she could feel it in her ears.

"What happened to the guy?" she asked.

"What guy?"

"The construction guy, Sweet Pea!"

Sweet Pea stopped wiping down windows long enough to regard her with a bemused shrug.

"Last I heard he offed himself. He wouldn't be the first Lodge business partner to do that. Or the first dead body in this town."

Now she couldn't hear her heart at all, but mostly because it was difficult to breathe.

She didn't believe it. She didn't. 

She didn't believe the _suicide_.

People had always committed suicide around the Lodges, but she thought Ethel Muggs' father might have been the only real suicide. The others had probably been... 

Something else.

But her father would not have killed Ethel's. Ethel was nice, and her family was probably nice when they weren't stressed out in hospital waiting rooms. And Veronica's father didn't target people like that. He only killed those who went against the Family, who backed out on deals. There was a code to the Lodges. There was a brilliant vein of honor and ethics. They did not kill the Muggs or Andrews of the world.

She was pressing herself into her chair for some reason, fingers white on the arms, springs poking into her back. Doing this seemed to help her breathe better.

When Sweet Pea leaned against the wall next to her chair, the kitchen-soap and leather oil smell of him hit her, bringing her back to herself a little. She stared up at him. He was squinting down at her, like he was trying to figure her out.

"Look," he told her, after a few seconds. "No one's gonna off you. FP says he won't, so he won't. He's a Serpent. We have rules, a code, a sense of honor."

Oh, _god_.

Veronica closed her eyes.

"Regrettably, Sweet Pea? Everybody thinks they have that. Even Hiram Lodge."

Sweet Pea scoffed.

"No. Guys like that, on top of the world, they know rules aren't ever gonna touch them, so they don't play by real rules. They slide them on and off, like a coat. But us -- we have nothing if we don't stick to our rules. You can trust us to care about our word."

This declaration of thug life gang philosophy was simplistic in the extreme, but it still struck Veronica enough that now she regarded him seriously. She didn't like him, of course, because he'd come to Archie's house and tried to beat him up. But he put her in mind of something.

When she'd been very small, once, a man her father had disliked, one of the Family, had dangled a pair of earrings before her. A gift for _his_ daughter.

"Your daddy buy you these? Huh? Eleanor of Aquitaine wore these pearls. I bet your daddy never bought you these. These belong in a museum, but they're gonna go to my Debbie."

They did not go to Debbie. They went to Veronica. Her father presented them to her on her eighth birthday, and nine days later Debbie's father was found in the Hudson. Veronica asked if the police would find who did it -- she'd been vaguely aware, then, that you were supposed to show a dutiful interest in the dead, you were supposed to be charmingly sad. Abuelita had been watching a telenovela police procedural around that time, too, so that had felt like a nice appropriate question.

"The police?" her father had said. 

"It's their job to make sure people follow the rules," Veronica had said unsteadily.

Her father had smiled, his teeth flashing. "Ah. Well. Who knows? Rules and laws, _m'ijita_ , are like spiderwebs. They can catch a culprit if he's a small threat, a fly. But they cannot catch a tiger."

-

After he finished cleaning the sunroom -- and now it did actually let the sun in, so even Veronica had to admit he'd done a decent job -- Sweet Pea announced that he needed to go do something.

"Do something?" Veronica asked, annoyed. "You're supposed to be watching me! Do I have to come with you?”

He nodded. And further protests only made him cross his arms and look bored, so eventually Veronica assented, feeling annoyed. 

At least he uncuffed her from the pipe. And looked up at the ceiling while she quickly used the bathroom, and brought her back to the 70s-grotesque room this world’s Betty called home. There, he found some clothes for her in the closet. They looked nothing like the clothes her Betty wore. They were too tight; too cheap; and too camouflage, flannel, and leather-themed. Veronica made do, feeling very sacrificial about it. Sweet Pea watched her out of the corner of his eye, but he did it in such an uninterested, casual way that rather than be mortified, she was almost insulted. 

He wasn’t the first person she’d changed in front of, but usually she produced more of an effect. Usually she didn’t even have to change to produce an effect. Veronica walked into rooms and watched people react like the walls had fallen down. Archie. Betty, even. 

Sweet Pea reacted like Veronica’s bare back was a nine to five job, which was frustrating because the more her insecurities about her father mounted, the more she wanted validation. 

“I am in a very dark emotional place right now, so your little errand needs to be quick,” she told him testily. 

“How are you with motorcycles?” was all he said, looking down at her like she was a very small mouse that was insisting he, a cat, fall on the mousetrap for it. Veronica ignored this look. 

“Appalled at their impact on the environment and the try-hard machismo they exude, otherwise neutral,” she said.

“Fine. I’ll cuff you to my wallet chain and you can hold on. We’ll get back to town faster that way.”

"What will the Joneses say when they discover you've spirited me off to town?" 

Sweet Pea scoffed. 

"We're coming back."

Talk about another damper for the spirit. If Veronica never had to look at this shabby little house again, it would be too soon. It was nicer than the Jones trailer, but not by much. When they were speeding down the access road back to the Southside she felt a _little_ lighter, if only because she no longer had to look at the kind of squalor people apparently preferred to surround themselves with rather than do business with the Lodges.

Maybe that people were right to surround themselves with. Rather than do business with the Lodges. She was wearing a heavy denim jacket borrowed from this Betty, and yet between that thought and the rush of cold air around the bike, she could hardly keep warm.

In the cold winter sun, the Southside was a wreck of half-rotted, burned-out little buildings and pockmarked streets. Sweet Pea took a left when they were out of the forest, bringing them through what had once been the SoDale complex. For all her bluster, Veronica found herself shutting her eyes. 

She was ashamed to shut them, but now that she was here, she really didn't want to see. She didn't need to. She already believed that it was as bad as they said.

Beyond SoDale, by the river, an even stranger complex dotted the sky. It was a collection of low warehouses and thin smokestacks, belching dirty air and bad smells out onto Sweetwater River. Veronica tried to ask about it and couldn't get the words out at first -- she was too busy gagging.

"What _is_ that?" she finally managed, shouting the question so Sweet Pea would hear over the roar of his bike.

"Waste processing plant," he shot back.

Veronica thought, _Please don't be--_

"Hiram Lodge built it," Sweet Pea continued, his words now almost swallowed up by the clanking of trucks nearby. "He volunteered Lodgeville to process most of the garbage for the state."

Now they were winding through a warren of back streets, bordered by more warehouse walls and barbed wire fences. Sweet Pea slowed his bike to a stop when they reached an alley, so that he could peer into it. He didn't seem to find what he was looking for. Before he could start the bike, Veronica said, "I bet that brought jobs, at least?"

_Please,_ she thought. _Please, please, please. It's a logical conclusion._

Sweet Pea looked at her over his shoulder, his face shadowed by his helmet.

"Lodge employs his own guys," he said, short about it. "They're not above-board in there, everybody knows that. And couple guys he did hire from around town tried to be whistleblowers. Because once the plant went up a lot of the kids here got asthma, and other problems too. Jug's little sister, before his mom took her away -- she was hospitalized like four times --"

God. Jughead had a little sister in this universe? Was the sister, was this whole world, expressly created to torment Veronica?

"--because the plant kept making her sick. Doctors were too cowardly to admit it, but you just have to look at the river to see what the chemicals do. Not to mention the smell, and the noise of the trucks."

Sweet Pea stopped. Considered something.

"Not sure it would be worth it if he did start hiring us again," he decided, "though some guys would take the jobs and not look back."

Then he started his bike again, leaving Veronica to clutch him and consider this dystopian nightmarescape of Lodgeville. _Snowpiercer_ , Jughead had snapped. _The guys eating the cockroaches._

She'd never seen that movie, but it wasn't cockroaches she was worried about. It was tigers too big to be caught.

Around the third or fourth alleyway, Sweet Pea found what he was looking for. Another motorcycle and a van, both parked so that a dumpster blocked all but their front fenders from sight. Sweet Pea parked his bike and they got off, disentangling themselves and arranging wallet chain and cuffs so that they could more or less walk side by side down the dank alleyway. The boots Veronica had borrowed from Betty were not her style -- ugly, functional combat things -- but they at least seemed up to the task of wading through what appeared to be chemical effluence, so Veronica was grateful for them.

When they reached the van, Sweet Pea rapped on it twice.

Fangs Fogarty poked his affable head out. He had a toothbrush in one hand, and a bottle of water in the other. Veronica eyed both almost jealously. She'd had to swig toothpaste around in her mouth this morning, so Fangs' ad-hoc dental care was something that, right now, she would trade several Birkin bags for.

"Yo," Sweet Pea said, like it was common to find Fangs brushing his teeth in smelly industrial zones. "Thought you'd be here with him. Your phone's off. Abs okay?"

"Abs?" Veronica said. It seemed like a very intimate question.

"My brother," Fangs said. "Yeah. Sleeping. You know he's okay once he thinks he's out of town. Easier for him to get some shut-eye."

"Your brother comes out here to _sleep_?" Veronica said, horrified.

Fangs looked at her patiently. 

"My brother starts wearing tin foil if he thinks authority figures can find him," he said. "My brother thinks cellphones are the aliens' way of brainwashing humanity."

Now Sweet Pea spoke up. "FP says his septic tank's still pretty full, even after everybody showered this morning. We can use his shower if we want."

"Septic...tank...?" Veronica tried. She couldn't imagine two words that could possibly sound worse together. 

Sweet Pea grinned. "The Snakesmith made him put it in. She's not dumb. The rest of us, we get cut off when we can't pay our dues to the water company. Not him."

This world being what it was, Veronica had to wonder if her father was responsible for that, too. And the crazy brother. Why was Fangs with his crazy brother? And why was Sweet Pea responsible for his family's water bill? She wanted to ask about their parents, but bit her tongue. 

If you had to _ask_ about somebody's parents, the answer was probably unseemly. 

Anyway, her opening had passed. Fangs had stopped brushing his teeth, spitting into the little channels of gunk that lined the alley floor, and climbed out of the window of the van.

"Door's jammed," he'd explained offhandedly, and then reached in and pulled out a paper. The _Blossom Bugle_. Veronica stared at it.

"Look," he told Sweet Pea. "'Man found dead in Southside alleyway with hole in his head. The Sheriff says foul play is afoot.'"

He shared a look with Sweet Pea, the kinds of looks boys sometimes shared that always annoyed Veronica Lodge, because she seemed to be so thoroughly un-invited to them.

"You can't fool the Sheriff," Sweet Pea said, deadpan.

Then he Fangs fell to pieces with laughter, like this was an old routine for them. Veronica stamped her foot to get their attention.

"Can we take potshots at the Sheriff somewhere that doesn't smell like the bathroom of an East Village nightclub?" she said. "You mentioned showers. That would be delightful about now."

She hadn't had a shower yet. She'd complained about it very stridently to FP Jones this morning, and his only response had been to bring his index finger to his mouth and snap the skin there like a rubber band, making a popping sound, a gesture so dramatically rude that Veronica was shocked she'd never seen his son do it.

"If we let you take a shower, do we have to watch you?" Fangs said, like the thought didn't appeal to him.

Okay. That was just offensive.

"Nah," Sweet Pea said. "There's two of us now. One of us can post outside the bathroom window and the other outside the bathroom door so she doesn't escape."

"Where would I go?" Veronica said, stamping her foot again. "A burned out condo complex? A garbage plant? Or are there other scintillating Lodgeville sights I should check out? More superfund sites?"

She could go to the house of Senator Hiram Lodge. She could try to do that. She'd agreed to stick with Betty and her mother, because that plan had made sense at the time. Then she'd heard that they were in _Lodgeville_ and she'd almost changed her mind, almost decided to find her father instead. If anyone could get them back to where they belonged, if anyone had the resources, it was daddy.

But now, in the grey light of the alleyway, she just wanted to close her eyes and go back to a time when she could collect a new bauble from Hiram and not feel bad about it.

She knew that was a selfish desire. Her father's charm could make all of this just a bad dream. If she found him, even now, even in this world, he would make sure that she could be a Veronica who didn't have to worry about septic tanks, or garbage plants, or dead Fred Andrews.

The thought was intoxicating, but it wasn’t right. It just slithered around in her mind, no different than the streams of greasy discharge that stank up the alleyway.


	5. The Diarist

Their school was where Pickens Park was supposed to be.

Or maybe Pickens Park was still there, underneath it. Many of the trees remained, and most of the park was still unpaved wild grass. But at least a dozen large trailers had been spread out around General Pickens' statue, some with walkways connecting them. Toni and Jughead guided Betty to a large red trailer to the right for her first class, but Betty stalled before they reached the walkway. 

She didn't know anything about this school. She didn't know who her teachers were or who her classmates were, where the bathroom was or if she was supposed to show up for any extracurriculars.

"Maybe I should go to the school office and let them know I'm back," she said. "Since I haven't been back at--" there was only one place this could be, only one institution it could be meant to replace, "--at Southside High in such a long time."

"B, Southside High closed fifteen years ago," Toni said. "This is Lodgeville High."

Right. Of course. That made sense. As Jughead and Toni exchanged a concerned look, Betty tried to stay breezy, like she'd said nothing odd.

"I know that," she said quickly. "Because after Southside High closed, the schools merged."

Jughead and Toni's expressions didn't change.

"And then we all moved here!" Betty finished, like this was only logical. Like it was old news. Nothing to see or question here.

"Not all of us," Jughead said. His face twisted up. He kicked at the dirt with his boot. "After all, kids who can pass the entrance exam get to go to PEP."

"Pep?" Betty said. Was that what had replaced Riverdale High? A general commitment to liveliness and high spirits? That didn't seem to be educationally adequate at all. 

Toni rolled her eyes and shifted her messenger bag to her front, fingers worrying the straps. 

"That's what they all call Pembroke Excellence Prep?" she said. "Their amazing charter school? You know, since for the whole five years they deigned to let Southsiders go to school with the Northsiders, so many people complained that Mayor Lodge decided she just _had_ to get into the education racket."

 _Mayor Lodge_? Oh, god. Was this world's Veronica openly running the Northside's school or something? Wait. No. That made no sense. It had to be Veronica's mother.

"Hermione and Hiram Lodge," Jughead said now, confirming this hunch, "get a chunk of our local education budget to educate the nice kids, while the rest of us go to the school that has to cut every corner to break even."

"They sold our main building on the Northside last year, remember?" Toni said. "The Lodges bought it. Naturally."

"It's going to be a new gym complex for PEP," Jughead said, with a smile that could cut glass. He was back to being the nervy, angry Jughead that even in her world seemed to have no time for her, and he swept past the girls now to enter the trailer. Toni followed him, with a listless shrug in Betty's direction.

After this, her day didn't exactly improve. 

In morning science, there weren't enough textbooks to go around and the projector kept failing them. Between classes, the line for the bathroom trailer swelled, so that by the time she reached third in line she had to give up because she was late for English class, where they spent an hour silently watching _Stand By Me_. Toni told her in a whisper that they'd watched it seven times. 

Worst of all, the teachers didn't seem to like Betty. When she broke a pencil in math, the thin-lipped Mrs. Numeralis told her that if she didn't stop trying to get attention, she'd be sent to the office. And when Betty dared to make a face at this, Mrs. Numeralis said, "None of that attitude from you! Get out!"

"But I didn't say--" Betty began.

" _Out_!"

She got out, throwing a despairing look at Toni and feeling oddly grateful that Jughead wasn't in their math class. Her Jughead would have argued with Mrs. Numeralis, but maybe this Jughead wouldn't. She debated whether to go to the office. She supposed she should, but she didn't want to, and she was getting the impression that this world's Betty wouldn't.

"You're back?" she heard a voice from behind her, with a whistle. "Let's see how long you last."

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She turned around, slow and full of dread. Joseph Svenson was picking up trash by the bathroom trailer, first a black plastic bottle that made Betty jump because she thought it was something deadlier, then some crumpled red Cheezo bags that for a moment looked like fabric stained with blood.

 _It's him,_ Betty thought, every corner of her mind taut and terrified. _It's the Black Hood._

"Hey!" Toni said. 

Betty jumped again. Toni, apparently not at all worried about Svenson, gave her another strange look and waved a piece of painted cardboard at her.

"I got a bathroom pass since Numeralis like me, but honestly? Screw it. Let's take an early lunch."

Then she dragged Betty away. Betty let herself be dragged. She didn't want to be near Svenson. Maybe he wasn't the Black Hood in this world. But he _was_ the Black Hood.

She hardly processed it when Toni prodded her, trying to get her to climb up on an electric generator at the back of the science trailer. From there, they could make it to the top of the trailer itself, where there was enough space to sit with their heads brushing the unseasonable green leaves of a stubborn maple tree. Toni faced her, sitting crossed-legged, and rummaged around in her bag for what turned out to be a bottle of nail polish. It was the cool, dangerous sheen of a puddle warped by gasoline. Betty would never have thought to wear it, but this didn't stop Toni from grabbing Betty's left hand and starting in on it anyway.

"So," she said, as she worked. "You're a little off. Want to talk about whatever happened with Penny and Tall Boy?"

No. That was small in the face of the Black Hood.

"Does this town have any serial killers?" Betty asked.

Toni craned her head and looked at Betty like Betty had just announced that Christmas was to be celebrated in the month of Wednesday.

"Not that I know of," she said slowly. "And I would know, but we could also ask Jug, since he would know too."

Oh. Right. Because, even in this world, apparently Toni and Jughead had an instinctive union borne of knowing the top ten most scintillating facts about Ted Bundy. For some reason, this managed to jar Betty out of her Black Hood fear. Mostly because it was so annoying. Even in a leather jacket and gasoline nail polish, she doubted she could match Toni for dangerous cool girl appeal. The comfort Betty and Jughead had developed after ten-plus years of friendship, Jughead and Toni had seemed to establish in about ten minutes.

"Seriously," Toni said now. "What is it? If not Tall Boy or Penny, then what? Malachi?"

"Malachi?" Betty echoed.

"Yeah. Ever since you stabbed him, he's acted like you're destined to be his manic pixie gang wife."

Ever since she what?

Against her better judgment, she shelved Joseph Svenson and the Black Hood. Because apparently in this world she ran around stabbing people. And because Toni was reminding Betty of something she'd whispered earlier, at breakfast.

 _First of all, your new lothario is a total liar. He tried to tell me I was being_ investigated. _But, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to assume that he was just trying to get to you and that you're not responding to his texts or something. Still, B. Not a good look._

"I-- my lothario," Betty began. "The one who talked to you. Toni, is that--"

Malachi?

But Toni now cut in. "Okay, listen, if you like the guy you like the guy," she said, finishing with Betty's nails and giving them a cursory blow. Rather than do Betty's right hand, she moved onto her own left hand next, alternating fingers like she had some sort of madcap plan that would tie together in the end. 

"I think what he wanted to get across, between all his deeply weird declarations, was that he was gonna text you today and he wants you to respond. And I'd be worried, except that I know you can take care of yourself. You _can_ take care of this guy if you need to, right?"

She looked up at Betty through her lashes. Toni really was provokingly pretty, pretty enough for this world's Betty to kiss. Pretty enough that Betty actually could understand why _Jughead_ might want to do stuff with her, which was sort of the whole problem. And evidently Toni was really nice when she liked you, a fact that seemed to inflate that problem to new dimensions.

"I'll let you know if I need help getting rid of him," Betty told her. "Lothario, I mean."

After a second, she pulled out her phone. She hadn't been able to unlock it, even though she was normally good at that kind of thing, because this universe's Betty had chosen a truly inscrutable password. Otherwise she would have pulled up her text messages and tried to discover this Lothario's identity. 'Not Malachi,' seemed a safe bet. Unfortunately, 'not Jughead' also seemed safe. Betty frowned at the phone. In response, it blinked the date and time and its battery life at her.

Toni finished alternating nails on both her own hands, and turned back to Betty, gently plucking the phone out of her hands to get access to her right hand. The fluid comfort with which she did this prodded another question out of Betty.

"Did you...like...our makeout session?"

Toni gave her an amused smile.

"Not to be a bisexual stereotype, but I think I'd like any makeout session with an attractive and interesting partner."

"Like Jug?"

Maybe Toni and Jughead hadn't done anything in this world. Maybe Toni would look at her like she was crazy again. This time, Betty wanted Toni to look at her like that. 

"Neither of you was an entirely ill-advised hookup, if that's what you're asking," said Toni, ever one to disappoint. "Both of you were fine, and that's all I'm going to tell either of you when you ask. It's not like I'm an expert! You know I don't have your way with seduction. I've only messed around with like four people. You, Jug, Sweet Pea--" here she made a face, "--thanks a lot, Tanqueray. And the fourth one is best not mentioned, of course."

"Seduction?" Betty said. 

Toni had now finished painting all of her nails. She picked up both of Betty's hands and blew on them in a manner that indicated she would be ignoring this last question, possibly because she thought Betty was being coy. 

"Fine!" she said, when she was done. "You're a better kisser. Happy? He's better with his hands--"

That was true, Betty thought miserably. He was _good_ with his hands.

"--so it's no use getting into some weird stepsibling competition over it. Anyway, I feel like an asshole, and not just because your mom assumed I made her little girl a lesbian. I should have respected the unspoken rule that the Cooper-Smith-Jones clan only loves the thug life, okay?"

"Do we?" Betty asked. 

That didn't sound like her. And she didn't want that to sound like Jughead, any Jughead. Her Jughead wasn't the one who spat angrily about his father's gang in an empty Southside parking lot. Her Jughead was the one who looked fearful about cutting people, who turned to her for help rather than assuming she had no place in his life.

If he had to be her brother in this world, at least let him be _her_ Jughead.

"You obviously do," Toni said, shrugging. "I don't know about Jughead."

-

She was thrown out of class again that afternoon, during history. This time her phone began to buzz, and when she reached for it the teacher swooped down on her. This time, she hadn't even been in class long enough to learn the teacher's name.

"You," he said. "When was the last time you were here? September? When you vandalized the faculty trailer. Well, it's zero tolerance now with me. That phone should have been turned in this morning. Go report to the office."

Jughead was in this class. Betty avoided looking at him as she gathered up her things, but then there was a crash from his general direction. Her head shot up. He'd kicked his desk clear into the wall, where it had collided with a shelf full of books on the pilgrims. Betty stared at him. He looked deeply satisfied with himself.

"Jones!" snapped the teacher. "Out!"

This time they did go to the office, where they each dutifully received a two-day suspension. As they clattered down the steps to the office trailer, into an afternoon that seemed perversely to wink at them with bright sunshine, Betty let out a long breath.

She was frustrated and confused and more than a little scared. Murderers roamed school grounds in this universe. She'd apparently vandalized school property and stabbed a classmate. This morning, she had found two completely new tattoos in completely unexpected places during her shower. And now she'd been suspended.

But Jughead had also orchestrated a suspension for himself. Maybe for her?

She'd fallen into step next to him as they'd walked in the direction of Main Street and Sweetwater River. Now she looked up at him. The sunlight sunk new hues into his curl of dark hair, and his shadowed eyes were brilliant with color today.

And he was looking at her.

"Betty, are you okay?" he asked. 

It was the same question Toni had asked, and yet when Toni had asked it it hadn't made her feel okay. It hadn't felt like a reset to that wondrous period at the start of the autumn, before gangs and the Black Hood. She hadn't known that period was wondrous while it was happening. Now she knew.

"You can talk to me--" Jughead began, but Betty didn't want to talk. She wanted suddenly to go back to that moment in her bedroom with him, when she'd felt so anxious and yet full of purpose, and he'd been, in hindsight, so brave. Bravery was for people like him, like them, not lucky people, people who had to wade through emotions and confusion and take chances anyway. She stopped walking abruptly and put a finger to his mouth. Watched the way his lips parted in surprise.

Right. Stepsiblings.

"Um," she said.

Then she thought, _oh, hell, it's not like we're blood-related_ , and got up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Her hands cupped his jaw almost of their own volition. She felt like warmth was flashing its way through her brain. For a second he kissed back, for a second things were perfect.

Then he stepped away, disentangling the two of them.

"Betty," he said. His voice was strange, fearful and wondering. 

Stepsiblings. Maybe he thought people would disapprove. Alice would disapprove. But Alice wasn't here, and anyway, this universe's Betty _had_ to not care. She ran around stabbing people. Kissing Jughead wasn't any worse than that.

Jughead took a deep breath, looking at the pavement.

"Bet -- Coop. If this is just because you're at sea right now. If this about last night, or, I don't know, about the rumble with Malachi, then you don't _have_ to do this. I mean, if it's because of those things, then maybe you don't really want to. Maybe you want to talk instead. We can just talk."

"What?" Betty said, confused.

He had his hands out a little like he was ready to hold her off, which made no sense because he'd kissed her back. He bit his lip.

"Look, sometimes you do things because they're an outlet. I get that. Remember the webcamming? The gentleman's club?"

Betty froze. He wasn't supposed to know about the webcamming. And what gentleman's club?

"I don't want to be like that stuff," Jughead said quietly. "For you. Okay? Because I don't need you to prove whatever you think you need to prove with all that."

Betty shook her head.

"I--you're not," she said, her voice rising crazily. "You're _not_!"

Jughead nodded, once. Then he held out a hand. She took it because her heart was pounding, because she felt like she needed it to center herself.

"Hey," Jughead said after a second, not unkindly. "I have an idea. You wanna go see Thomas?"

-

Thomas turned out to be Toni's grandfather. He had an ancient camper trailer parked down by the river, and sighed tiredly when he opened the door and saw that it was them.

"Toni didn't get suspended. She might finish out the day," Jughead said quickly.

"Thank goodness for small miracles," Thomas said. 

He moved away, but left the door open so they could come in. Inside, there was an old denim jacket with a snake emblem hung on the back of a chair. The jacket was too large to be Toni's, so Betty had to assume that Thomas was a Serpent. But he didn't put Betty in mind of a snake. He didn't have the frantic, dangerous energy she associated with snakes, either the literal or merely metaphorical ones like FP or Jughead's Serpent friends. No, Thomas was too assessing for that. He had a look that was steady, but not stupid. Even, but not blank.

"Toni tells me you're stepping down from your paper," he told Jughead, once they were all in the cozy dim space of the trailer, ringed around a worn coffee table.

"The Gray and Green? No. I just said it would be better if she was head editor instead of me," Jughead said. "She's more concise than me. And I'm sometimes not the best voice for a story, so--"

He fidgeted for some reason. 

"The important thing in a team is that you both speak and listen honestly," Thomas said. Then, "Are you going to write with them, Betty?"

Up until now, Betty had only been listening to the conversation because listening was a means to beat back the dread of Jughead pulling back from her, of Jughead knowing about the webcamming. Of Jughead thinking he was only there to be used like that -- like this was all she could want from him. Now she snapped fully to attention, though.

"What?" she said. "I'd love to."

"You would?" Jughead asked.

Betty nodded.

His face softened, clearly confused but not displeased.

"That's great," Jughead said, sincere about it.

Then he turned to Thomas.

"Hey, we wanted to check something we left with Toni--"

Thomas waved them at a beaded curtain in the corner.

"Go on. She trusts you. I trust you."

Jughead grabbed Betty's hand and led her behind the curtain, where they found an overstuffed loveseat long enough to accommodate a Toni; and a shelf packed with books, nail polish, glittery combs, and more bottles of FRANTIC ANTIC hair dye than Betty had ever seen in her life. Jughead crouched before the shelf and shifted aside several of these almost respectfully, before reaching for a thick leather journal at the back.

"Here," he said, holding it out to her. "I know you made me take it so Chic wouldn't read it, but I gave it to her so _I_ wouldn't be tempted to read it. I mean, you know _she_ won't read it."

Betty took the journal, surprised because she actually believed Jughead. She didn't like Toni, because being around someone that self-assuredly good-looking and unapologetically dangerous, someone who clearly didn't care if she was perfect and still managed to look it, and having Jughead around a girl like that... Well. It wasn't comforting. But this Toni obviously liked and cared about her. Betty felt a little bad for all the uncharitable thoughts she'd directed Toni's way.

"I don't know if you remember my birthday three years ago, right after Alice and my dad made it official?" Jughead said, standing now and scratching awkwardly at his neck. "I mean, maybe it wasn't a big deal to you. But I still feel the same way I did then, Betty."

Betty sat on the loveseat. The journal was heavy with what had to be almost a decade of this Betty's thoughts, maybe more, and she flipped until she found October 2nd, three years ago. Jughead watched her do it, arms crossed, shoulders tense.

_Jughead is thirteen now, and I'm thirteen now. I wanted to give him the book I got him yesterday. I was going to do it at school where Chic wouldn't see and make fun of me. But I couldn't because by third period I got suspended again because I called Trula Twyst a bad word (Tall Boy uses it. Trula T**t. You can figure it out.) She said the worst one first (Cooper C**t. Tall Boy says that too), but nobody heard her but me. Chic thinks it's funny. Polly got upset with him when he laughed and put glue in his hair while he was sleeping. FP had to take Chic to the barber shop, so he wasn't here when we cut Jughead's cake. Jughead wouldn't eat it._

_He said it wasn't because of me. He said he doesn't like his birthday anyway._

_Mom isn't happy. She says it's my fault._

_I went to Jughead's room after to give him the book, since Chic was still at the barber shop. Toni told me Trula Twyst thinks he's dreamy and wants to kiss him, and I think that was where everything started. Otherwise I would have ignored Trula._

_I didn't want Trula to be the first one to kiss him. It would be okay if it was Toni. Not great but okay. But I decided it would be better if it was me. So I closed my eyes and did it. After I did it he said_

"Don't kiss me if you don't mean it," Jughead said.

Betty stared at him. She was clutching the other Betty's journal so hard her knuckles hurt, and she didn't care. 

He _did_ like her. He did. How long had he liked her? In all worlds? She wanted to say, _but what if I mean it?_ but her mouth felt dry and her eyes were wet, not with sadness but with some emotion so great she could barely comprehend it. Jughead still had his arms crossed, and he was looking at all the bottles of hair dye like he was mortified.

"Jughead! You and Betty want some soup?" came Thomas' voice. 

Jughead's face snapped up.

"Yeah," he said.

"Help me get it ready," said Thomas.

Jughead seemed almost grateful for the exit. He swallowed and told Betty, "You heard that. The true heir to Hiram Lodge's little fiefdom needs my help."

Then he dashed beyond the beaded curtain, leaving Betty alone with the journal. Betty tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it took a few tries. Her cheeks were wet. That enormous feeling still possessed her. She could hear plates and utensils clanging and Thomas telling Jughead something in that even voice of his. It was strangely soothing.

 _Why_ did Jughead think she didn't mean it?

The journal sat there in her lap, waiting be interrogated. She flipped to the front, where there were a number of loose pages. She'd thought they must have come loose from the binding at first, but now she saw that they had never been bound. They were from an older, smaller book, one with pink ruler lines and far too many heart stickers on the pages. The words were barely legible.

_I hav a bother his nam is chik. dad duznt lik him, it maks mom sad. i tryed too say it wus ok. she sed betty go too bed._

Betty Cooper, age too young to spell properly.

She flipped forward. Barely a year later.

_mom sed she told the jujje she wants us kids too be toogethur. dad sed to us we can just stay toogethur he does not want me and polly any way if it he has too see her too_

_so aftur mom cryed. I told her not too. I do not like when she crys. she got happy but then I droped a plat. she got mad. i hert my hand aftur._

Then, a few years after this,

_The Register is shutting down. Mom says she can't break even. She's so angry that Polly wouldn't talk to her and Chic wouldn't talk to her so I did. I told her about my project with Juggie and Toni to interview one person who knows town history, we are picking Toni's grandpa. Afterward mom smiled. I was glad. I don't want her to be sad. But then she got my progress report which says I am always talking to boys. It's not true I only talk to Juggie but mom said Betty if you're going to be a harlot you should just drop out of school right now and forget the interview. I forgot to cut my nails this weekend so I hurt my hands again._

Then, a few years after,

_Mom got upset about this lawyer she says is pulling wool over people's eyes. She said that since this woman is the Snake Charmer, everyone listens to her, but they shouldn’t. I told FP Mom could be the Snake SMITH since that’s her name, and people could listen to her instead. Mom doesn't have a law degree but she's smart and she got Hogeye out of prison last year just by talking to the sheriff. FP said this was a good idea. It was nice that he said that, because then mom stopped being upset, but when she learned it was my idea she got annoyed with me._

_It's fine if FP has ideas, but not me._

_Chic saw my hands and said if I keep doing it they're going to look ugly._

Over. And over. And over.

_I want to make mom feel better._

_I want to be good for mom._

Betty's diary at home read the same way, so she knew even before she reached the end of each entry what the outcome would be. Not enough. Never enough. Not enough during the divorce, not enough when this Betty had moved to the Southside shortly after. Not enough when they learned Hal had been remarried. Not enough when they lost their house by Pickens Park. Not enough when Polly had her first pregnancy scare -- god, where was Polly? -- three years too early.

So many years of wanting to please. So many years of documenting the scars on her palms. Mirror Betty was not so different from regular old Betty of Elm Street. Elm Street Betty had had Archie, and later Jughead. Mirror Betty, for all that she spiraled harder thanks to the many spiraling options offered by the Southside, had Jughead, and here and there Toni, and in the later entries sometimes Sweet Pea or Fangs. But they weren't enough, just like Archie hadn't been enough. 

When she turned fourteen, this Betty wrote:

_Mom said Byrdie saw me drinking with Trula. I was drinking a COKE, not a BEER, but she still told me that girls don't get the chances men do and then she told Jughead she hoped he never got seen with a girl like me._

_I was so mad. I don't care anymore. I don't CARE. Tomorrow I am going to drink and he's still going to be seen with me, I bet._

So then -- webcamming. A night at a gentleman's club, which made the Serpent dance feel hot and shameful and ugly, instead of just something she had quietly excised from her mind. Then vandalizing. Drugs. Fights. Something horrible called the 'Gauntlet,' which she'd asked Tall Boy if she could do so that within a year she could do it back to this Trula Twyst, in all its violent glory. 

Because this Betty, like Betty herself, had never made her mom feel better. She’d failed every time. And then she'd learned the best ways to escape that failure. By no longer being nice. By not giving a shit. There weren't many kisses or hookups here, not many more than Toni's. But every single one was less a kiss than a new place to dig her nails in. No wonder Jug thought her kiss meant nothing. He was working from past precedent. And now this Betty had moved on, found herself someone else that she appeared to have been meeting since November, though the entries on him were very short and mystifying.

_Lothario says he needs my help. Chic said: why not? I agree. It could be fun._

As if on cue, her phone buzzed again. Now she remembered why she'd wanted to check it in class. When she pulled it hurriedly out of her bag, she saw both a new text and, just below it, the text from earlier.

**You had better be coming Betty Cooper -- FBI**

**I expect you at the southside church, 4pm -- the FBI**

"What?" Betty asked her phone. 

This world's Betty had just begun to make sense, but the world itself remained as confusing as ever.


	6. An Unlikely Agent

When she said she needed to go to the Southside Church, neither Jughead nor Thomas seemed all that surprised that she was leaving.

They did seem disbelieving about the location. Thomas repeated it once, like it confused him. And Jughead gave her the look he generally reserved for authority figures who provoked his sarcasm by being bad liars. But he didn't say anything sarcastic. He just said, "You go where the wind takes you, Coop. I get it."

This Jughead was at once more Southside and more complacent than her Jughead. He wouldn't stop this Betty if she wanted to leave. He let this Betty do as she pleased. Betty fingered the journal in her messenger bag as she walked to the church, and wondered about when this Betty had joined the Serpents. She hadn't written much about Jughead's reaction to it. But Betty could bet that Jughead hadn't raised a fuss. This Jughead wasn't one to exclude her for her own protection.

She'd always thought that would be ideal. But the result she'd wanted -- a Jughead who wouldn't dare try to keep her out -- dangled from a series of events she'd never wanted at all. This Jughead had seen the worst sides of her. 

She wondered if this came of demanding that the carpet give her a Jughead no less hers than the Serpents'. Now they were both Serpents. She had a rearing snake on the back of her jacket to prove it, and a stepbrother who gave her whatever she wanted, except what she actually wanted. Him.

She loitered a bit at the church steps, wondering if they would let gang members in. It didn't seem very church-ish. She ended up stripping off her jacket and shoving it in her bag. Then she stepped inside.

Incense. Soaring white ceilings. Flowers clustered by the altar. Suffering Christs rendered in ornate glass. Lodgeville was not a nice town -- its river was murkier and uglier than the Sweetwater back home, its buildings were crumbling, and the long shadow of SoDale gave even the afternoon light a grey tint. But clearly the church was doing fine.

She slid into a pew near the front to wait. At this hour, the church was nearly empty. A notice board by the front indicated that the next mass wouldn't be for another three hours. Hopefully she wouldn't have to wait that long to meet her supposed lothario.

Whoever he was, he had an odd sense of humor, signing his texts "the FBI." And insisting that they meet in a church. If the populations of Riverdale and Lodgeville overlapped, if everyone here was simply another version of everyone back home, then maybe it was even someone she knew. But she couldn't come up with many likely candidates. The journal said he was handsome "in that way everybody likes." It also said he was "dumber than he thinks." That could be anyone. Moose, Raj Patel, Reggie Mantle.

Oh boy. She really, really hoped this Betty hadn't gone and established a secret romance with Reggie. He was definitely handsome enough that everybody agreed on the fact, but he wasn't Betty's type, precisely because he seemed likely to want to do dirty things in churches, and he would almost certainly think it was funny to call himself "the FBI."

She was so busy frowning over this that she barely noticed when someone slid into the pew behind her.

"You came. Good. Don't turn around."

Naturally, she wanted to turn around. Because she knew that voice. She knew it. But it was muffled and distorted somehow. It sounded curiously devoid of any feeling, except for an authoritative note that didn't belong to it at all.

That note said he really wasn't kidding about not turning around. Betty almost did anyway, to make a point, but the whole situation was so strange that she wanted to see it play out.

"To the right of the confessional there is a small door. Beyond that, a set of steps. I want you to go through the door and down the steps, and I'll meet you in the alley just beyond. Go!"

Then he hurriedly dashed out of his pew. Turning, she caught sight of him running out of the front. Fedora. Trenchcoat. Scarf. But the rest of him was unmistakable.

Ever since she'd come to this world, the question _What the hell is happening?_ had played on a loop in her brain. Constantly. Confusion was a state of being for her at this point. But she kept expecting it to die down, and not only did it not do that, it kept reaching new levels. 

This moment was an absolute high point. She went through the door to the right of the confessional and down the steps to the alleyway mostly because her curiosity was now at a fever pitch. There, he was already waiting, hat pulled low over his eyes, brown scarf covering his mouth, hands in the pockets of the khaki trenchcoat.

"Betty Cooper," he began.

"Archie," Betty said, hearing how her voice indicated that her last shreds of patience were fleeing town. "What the hell is going on?"

Archie actually jumped.

"I'm not Archie! I'm Agent Lothario Pureheart! Of the FBI!"

"No," Betty said slowly. "You most definitely are not. You're Archie Andrews."

Then something occurred to her. 

"Also," she said, getting really annoyed now. "The FBI don't sign their texts _the FBI_ , Archie!"

-

The ensuing fight hardly bore mentioning, because it was so long, drawn-out, and stupid. For several rounds, Archie insisted his name was Lothario Pureheart and that he worked for the FBI. Betty in turn insisted that no, he was definitely still Archie; that owning a trenchcoat and fedora did not make him a secret agent; and that she didn't especially care if he had information on her parents' gang activities that he would be reporting to Washington, because he wouldn't be reporting to Washington, because he _wasn't with the FBI_.

"They don't hire people who will be turning sixteen in a month!" Betty hissed at him, ready to break something over his head in rage.

Then Archie slipped up and said, a little desperately, "How do you know? Anyway, you're wrong. My name isn't Andrews anymore! It's Archie Lodge!"

Betty stared at him.

" _What?_ "

Archie's eyes widened. Because he remained Archie, his look of utter panic was less frightening than it was charmingly handsome, even if he was now looming over her.

"I mean -- no! It's not Archie Lodge! It's--"

"If you say Lothario Pureheart with the FBI I am going to turn around and leave," Betty said threateningly.

"How do you know my name?" Archie said, giving up. "My old name?"

Betty wanted to tell him that they'd grown up together, that Archie Andrews and Betty Cooper were joined at the roots. That while she'd been learning how to be a nice girl, Archie had been learning how to be a nice boy. Complementary and safe together. Even if there was no ardor between them, that didn't mean there wasn't a bond as stable as that between two branches that struck out from the same tree. Archie and Betty, Betty and Archie, with their relationship always tucked there in the back pocket of their mutual childhood.

But he looked at her like he didn't know her. And this Betty had moved to the Southside early, and didn't know him. This Betty wouldn't have been able to tell that the handsome, despairing look Archie now took on was not a good sign.

"Okay. You know what? Nevermind. It doesn't matter how you know my old name, since now you know my real name," Archie said.

Betty took a step back for some reason even she couldn't quite discern.

"You told me your real name."

Archie Lodge. Archie. Lodge. He was too young for marriage to Veronica, unless Lodgeville had drastically different laws than Riverdale, but then again maybe it did. And anyway, Jason and Polly had tried to run away to Greendale to be married -- maybe in this universe Archie and Veronica had tried to do the same thing.

"I am sorry about this," Archie told her, cutting into her thoughts. His sorry was heartfelt, entirely genuine. Of course it was. He was Archie. 

He still lunged for her. Betty heard herself give an undignified yelp as she scrambled to get away. 

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"You compromised me!"

"No I didn't! You're not really with the FBI!"

"Doesn't matter, Cooper," Archie said earnestly, and lunged again.

He was bigger than she was, but she'd had years of experience besting him in childhood tickle-fights, so she knew his weak spots. So it really should have been even, but it wasn't. Because Betty had no interest in hurting Archie, while this Archie seemed to have only the most distantly apologetic feelings about hurting her. After what couldn't have been more than three minutes, he grabbed a hock of her loose hair and she screamed, and that seemed like it would settle it. Archie, her erstwhile brother in another universe, was dragging her to the mouth of the alleyway.

Then her real brother appeared. With a crowbar.

"Chic!" Betty said. "Wait -- no!"

Even with this universe's Archie being terrible, she still preferred Archie to Chic, so she couldn't help but wince as Archie went down, hard.

-

They went to a frozen yogurt parlor by the railroad tracks, sitting right in the spot which providence ought to have reserved for Pop's. It was called My Sweet Ronnie's. It had apparently demolished Pop's in a great explosion of overstuffed purple tuffets, mauve velvet curtains, and gleaming mahogany storefront.

Even after the day Betty had had, this was somehow the greatest affront. No burgers and shakes, no homey chrome diner. In its place, more jewel-hued ribbons than a craft store could offer, and also eighty-three varieties of frozen yogurt, each declaring itself more non-fat than the last. Chic breezily ordered himself a pistachio. 

"You're paying," he told her. "Since I just saved your ass from Lodge's _capo_."

Betty was still looking around at My Sweet Ronnie's. The waitress came back swiftly with Chic's yogurt and asked her what she wanted.

"Why?" Betty demanded.

"Because we only seat you if you pay," the waitress said slowly.

That wasn't what Betty had meant. She'd meant: why was Pop's gone? Why had Chic been there right when she needed him? Why was Archie running around pretending to be an FBI agent? And a Lodge?

"She'll just have a basic vanilla. It suits her on an elemental level she keeps foolishly trying to reject," Chic said, earning himself a dirty look from Betty.

He shrugged. When the waitress left, he said, "Why here and not Byrdie's? You know why. I don't want mom and FP finding out about our plan, and what better way to celebrate your screwing up our in with Lodge's _capo_ than to reconnoiter at one of Lodge's restaurants?"

"It used to be a diner," Betty said, still squirming uncomfortably at all the lace and velvet and ribbons. 

"Sure. But a few years ago Hiram Lodge's daughter was in town for her birthday and wanted a birthday spot, so he politely suggested the old owner retire," Chic said, shrugging. "He's always polite, I heard, but if you don't do what he says..."

Ghoulish and grinning, he drew a line across his throat with his pink yogurt spoon, just as the waitress came back with the vanilla. Betty looked down at its whorls and its little whipped peak and tried to come up with something she wanted to eat less. She failed.

"Care to tell me why you decided to go to school rather than explain what went wrong last night?" Chic said, once the waitress had stepped away again. "I'm assuming it's related to this new problem with the _capo_."

Betty had said _what?_ so many times over the past few hours that she couldn't even begin to say it again. She just closed her eyes, tried not to dig her nails into her palms, and figured if she waited long enough, this Chic might spill something useful.

He did.

"Betty!" he said. "What was the plan? Lodge's goon approached us trying to get info about the Serpents. You decided to pretend to buy his little FBI game and string him along. Show a little skin, pretend to be devoted--"

"It was linked to Penny and Tall Boy," Betty said.

She thought it must be. She thought that had to be it.

"Of course it was!" Chic said, hitting the tabletop with his yogurt spoon so hard he broke it the pink plastic in two. 

Annoyed, he grabbed Betty's yogurt spoon instead, then continued shoveling pistachio yogurt into his mouth as he spoke.

"It solved two birds with one stone," he said. "We get rid of Penny and Tall Boy before they do anything to us or mom. And we hand them off to the _capo_ , in order to make Mr. FBI think we'd put Lodge interests above all else."

"But we wouldn't do that?" Betty tried.

She hoped they wouldn't. But she'd read this Betty's diary, and so she didn't have complete faith that Alterna-Betty wouldn't have agreed to do something stupid to achieve her aims. She wasn't so different from Betty-Betty, in the worst ways. She made swift, decisive choices that were less choices than they were cool reactions to pain. 

"Of course we wouldn't," Chic said, rolling his eyes. "What's the plan for?"

Again Betty stayed silent. The Chic back home kept everything bottled in, the better to manipulate. But this Chic was less quietly menacing, more entitled and pampered. She knew instinctively that if she stayed quiet, he'd happily fill in the space around her, taking it all for himself.

"If anything ever goes tits up," Chic said, like he was speaking to a child, "and it will, you and I can get out and go anywhere we want. Maybe even with mom! That's why you're taking paychecks from the _capo_ , Betty!"

" _Maybe_ with mom?" Betty said, horrified. "What? And what about FP? Jughead?"

Chic smeared yogurt on his tongue and moved it around in his mouth for a few seconds.

"I like them," he said, short about it. "But they're not family. And you know what happens when the shit hits the wall, Betty. The fewer people we have to worry about, the better. I mean, it's not like Polly worried about us when she skipped town, right? No. She just went off and got pregnant and acted like all that mattered was her twins."

Betty stopped trying to keep from digging her nails into her palms and started trying to keep her palms from slapping him.

"Those are her children, Chic! She's allowed to put them first!"

Chic finished his yogurt and reached for hers.

"Oh, drop the innocent act, Betty. No one's buying it. Especially since you were obviously off making plans without me. Tell me, how _did_ you manage to land us such a big fish?"

"Archie?" Betty said, confused.

"What?" Chic said. "No. Who's Archie? I mean Veronica Lodge."

He reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a rolled-up magazine, which he slid across the table to her. Veronica was on the cover. Veronica on a pristine beach in a skimpy white bikini, hair pulled back, two dogs at her heels -- a bow-bedecked maltese and also Nick St. Clair. She and Nick appeared to be arguing. The cover said:

VERONICK ON THE OUTS AGAIN? 

Betty took this in, swallowing hard.

"We're so lucky no one in the gang reads these," Chic muttered. "Well. Mostly because hardly anybody in the gang reads. But I thought for sure Byrdie would recognize her. We're going to have to act quick and figure out what to do with her before somebody else does. So tell me, Betty: how do we play with the new piece we have? She seems to like you. That could upgrade our whole station in life."

Betty just stared at him.

Chic regarded her almost with affection now.

"Come on," he said. "Light of my life, blood of my blood. I don't know how you did it, but you handed us an extremely malleable heiress. So think big, okay? Polly shouldn't be the only one to make it out of this shit town."


	7. Delinquent Day

A shower could not save this day, but it did improve it slightly. For all three of them. Once they were clean, Sweet Pea and Fangs were in high enough spirits that they even helped her find the most tasteful pair of jeans this world's Betty owned, with only one set of rips, across the knee; and a positively adorable sleeveless black turtleneck that even a Veronica might wear.

Then the cuffs had to come back on.

"Ugh. Fine," Veronica said, eyeing them with distaste. 

"You are the pickiest hostage in the world," said Fangs.

"Do you get many?" asked Veronica. She was genuinely curious.

Fangs looked at Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea looked at Fangs. Another of those boy looks. 

"How many hostages?" Veronica demanded.

"Two too many," Sweet Pea said.

"So two?"

"He didn't say that," Fangs said quickly. "Maybe we take hostages all the time and we just happen to like some of them. So don't go thinking you can escape on us or anything."

But she highly doubted they did get many hostages, because Chic had irresponsibly pawned her off on Sweet Pea and Sweet Pea had irresponsibly taken her for a joy ride to get Fangs. She didn't know very much about how the Serpents ran, but it was _nothing_ like the Family. Instead it was ad hoc and friendly and possibly disastrous. 

Still, she bet even the Serpents had never corroded an entire town the way her father had this one.

Once the cuffs were on, she looked at Sweet Pea and Fangs expectantly.

"So," she said. "What do the Serpents do on a fine, unseasonably warm winter day, if not school?"

Again Sweet Pea and Fangs shared a look.

"How good are you at art?" Sweet Pea asked her.

"Why?" said Veronica. "Are we painting?"

"Sooooort of," he said. "But first--"

His eyes flicked back to Fangs'.

"Mallmart," Fangs breathed out, like the word held special magic.

" _Mallmart_ ," Sweet Pea echoed, with a grin.

Then, with eager looks at each other, they launched into a vague description of their plan for the day.

Now, the hot hip crime spree at Spence had been to get wasted, usually on the contents of daddy's liquor cabinet; go out to a nightclub; score some coke, watch a Dalton boy vandalize a wall for kicks; and then maybe hit a parking meter with your car if you hadn't been smart enough to take an Uber or rich enough to have your own driver.

But FP apparently kept no liquor in the house, on orders from his wife. And the only nightclubs in Lodgeville were strip clubs. And Sweet Pea's car wasn't running right. Plus the Serpents, he informed Veronica, were a mostly drug-free squad.

"Except for weed," Fangs put in, as they walked outside to their bikes. 

"Yeah, weed's fine," Sweet Pea said. He strapped his helmet on, then Veronica's. 

"Never one for the smell myself, but you all do you," Veronica said. With some uncuffing and re-cuffing, they got themselves on the bike again. She wound her arms around Sweet Pea, and though the one that was now cuffed to his wallet chain was a _bit_ uncomfortable, it was, she told herself firmly, no more uncomfortable than watching a Dalton boy tag the underside of the Manhattan Bridge.

That was what they were apparently left with today: the vandalizing. No matter how many times Veronica asked, neither Fangs nor Sweet Pea would reveal their intended canvas. All they would say was that it was going to be big, but that they needed to get the right tools first. 

For that they needed the local Mallmart, a grey cement emporium that loomed by the road to Centreville. Fangs and Sweet Pea parked their bikes as close to the entrance as they could, then took off their Serpent jackets. They made Veronica pull off the Serpent jacket she'd borrowed from Betty, too, though this took some surreptitious cuffing and uncuffing. All three jackets went into Fangs' motorcycle stash box. Then Fangs shoved his hands in his pockets and began to whistle as he walked to the wide automatic doors of the Mallmart. Sweet Pea put his arm around Veronica's shoulder and leaned into her, as though he were trying to look like her innocent boyfriend and not a gang member who had her handcuffed to his wallet chain.

"Okay," Veronica decided. "If you're trying to look _not_ suspicious, this is not how you do it. Arm off. I lean into you -- right, like this -- and you're too tall so you're going to have to sort of drape yourself loosely over me. Good. And Fangs! Stop whistling!"

In a few seconds, she succeeded in making them slightly less conspicuous, but she shouldn't have bothered. As soon as they were in, Fangs and Sweet Pea both went straight for a row of wide double-seater mobility scooters. 

"Are you Neanderthals? These are for the disabled!" Veronica told them, disappointed in them.

"The term," Sweet Pea informed her haughtily, "is persons with disabilities. And it's like eleven a.m. on a weekday. Nobody's actually shopping right now. And we're only taking two. Now get on."

So, in defiance of all decency, they zoomed into the Mallmart on scooters. Fangs had his own, and Veronica was crammed into one with Sweet Pea. The boys appeared to be looking for something, trawling wide aisles full of soda, chewing gum, Bitz crackers, cheap jewelry, pajama sets patterned with children's cartoons. 

"Spraypaint, aisle seventeen," Veronica informed them, when she saw a sign that she thought might cut their aimless wandering short.

"Not yet," Sweet Pea told her.

Instead they did figure-eights near the pet food aisle, zig-zags by the electronics.

"When store security sees what a strapping, able-bodied boy you are, they're not going to be happy with your choice of ride," Veronica informed Sweet Pea testily, once the low-budget pleasures of mobility scooters began to wear on her. She was fairly sure a man with a 'manager' nametag was trailing them, and had been ever since they'd entered the store.

"Ah," Sweet Pea said. "See, that's the thing. The billionaire fat cats who run Mallmart don't want to pay for store security. So whenever something goes wrong, they put in a call to the sheriff's office."

Fangs pulled up alongside them in his own scooter now.

"The deputies are totally sick of taking their calls. They got sick of it years ago. So whatever we do here, if Mallmart does call, they'll take their time responding. We'll have at least a twenty minute window to get out."

"So," Sweet Pea said, grinning maniacally, "start thinking of your favorite colors."

"Start what?" Veronica asked, but Fangs cut her off. 

"Sweets! Look!"

They'd pulled into a wide, long center aisle, mostly free of customers at this hour, and at the end was stacked a truly impressive display of Silver Buffalo Seven-Hour Energy drinks. The display nearly reached the cavernous ceiling.

"Chicken," Sweet Pea muttered.

"Chicken!" Fangs said, with a whoop.

Veronica realized what they were about to do.

"Wait!" she said. "No, no, no, no, absolutely _not_ \--"

As she protested, Sweet Pea floored his scooter. Fangs floored his. The shoppers who were unlucky enough to be in the way dove for other aisles. Veronica shrieked and, just before Sweet Pea reached the display, grabbed the wheel and made the scooter swerve. 

"Come _on_!" Sweet Pea said, cheated.

Cackling, Fangs swerved a second later, but the momentum from his swerve made the whole energy drink structure wobble. Veronica cast a fearful look at it before it swayed dramatically and then collapsed in on itself. 

As the manager yelped and ran towards the downed display, the boys backed up their scooters, in order to double back to the aisle with the spraypaint.

"Sage!" said the manager. "The energy drinks!"

A tall, pretty girl at a nearby jewelry display didn't move. She just said, placidly, "I get my break in two minutes. Call Earl."

"Then call the police!" hissed the manager. 

"Favorite colors?" Sweet Pea asked Veronica, as they sped away from this scene.

"Dark blue!" Veronica said promptly. "Purple!"

Her heart was racing. Mobility scooter chicken was maybe the silliest way to get the adrenaline pumping, but get it pumping it did. And when they finally reached the spraypaint, it didn't hurt that she got to enjoy Sweet Pea using his long arms to reach up and nab her colors. He tossed them at her with a, "Princess," and then swerved for the main exit. 

As they passed the checkout, she saw Sage with a phone to her ear. She was saying, "Hi, this is Mallmart. I'd like to report some teenagers. For what? I don't know. Being teenagers."

"They pay her shit and Earl keeps making comments about her breasts and the manager won't do anything," Sweet Pea told Veronica, as they clattered out onto the parking lot.

"You know her?"

"My sister," Sweet Pea informed her. "I would have paid, but I don't have the money, and neither does she. Like I said. They pay her _shit_."

"So you caused a distraction just to shoplift?" Veronica asked. She was more curious than aghast. She'd had her own shoplifting phase, but it had always been small things, like lipsticks and packs of high-end hosiery. It had been for the thrill of it, really, so it wasn't all that different from chicken.

"I don't have the money for spraypaint," Sweet Pea repeated, slow about it, like he thought she was being stupid. "And there's no other reason to mess up a display like that. I mean, it's just not a nice thing to do to the retail employees."

He pulled up next to his bike now and considered something.

"Except for Earl. Screw Earl."

-

After Mallmart, they went down the road to the Abode Depot. 

"We're vandalizing a hardware store?" Veronica said. "Why? Oh god. It's not some kind of protest against the construction industry's support of Hiram Lodge, is it?"

Sweet Pea and Fangs squinted at her.

"No," Fangs said slowly. "But good idea. But no. We're here to see a friend."

He meant Joaquin Desantos, in the flesh. Not on a bus. Not even in a leather jacket. Instead Joaquin was wearing a bright orange vest and calmly explaining the many advantages of a ceramic sink to a woman in a Baxter High Ravens sweatshirt.

"But when I turn this faucet, water doesn't come out," the woman said sharply.

"Right," said Joaquin. "It's a display. But the sink, ma'am--"

"Why doesn't the water come out?"

"Because it's a display. But ma'am--"

"I'm not going to spend four hundred dollars on a sink where the water doesn't come out--"

Fangs looked at Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea looked at Fangs. Veronica looked at both of them, and rather than let them knock over a display of sinks decided to take matters into her own hands.

"It sure is wonderful how they're giving away _free toilet bowl levers_ in aisle two," she declared, loudly enough for the woman to hear.

The woman perked up and excused herself. Sweet Pea and Fangs both stared at Veronica with something like admiration. Joaquin, meanwhile, began to groan.

"Guys!" he insisted. "I'm working! And I'm out of the Serpents on weekdays! And I'm working!"

Sweet Pea tried to lean dangerously against a sink, but this just tugged Veronica to him, making her trip a little. So then he stood straight again, startled, as she communicated with her eyes how very rude he was being. Fangs picked up the rude slack by fiddling with all the faucets on all the sinks.

"She's right," he informed Joaquin. "They don't work."

"It's a display."

Fangs winked at Veronica.

"So this is what you do during the week?" Sweet Pea said. He crossed his arms and glowered. "Drop out of school and the Serpents so you can dress up like a Cheez Foodle, sell people sinks that don't work?"

"It's a _display_! And FP said that if I wanted to take Monday-to-Friday breaks from the Serpents to make something of myself, I could take those breaks! So you're not supposed to be showing up here with your floozies!"

"Excuse me?" Veronica put in. She felt her blood pressure rising. "Watch who you call a floozy, prince of the bathroom emporium!"

"She's not my floozy," Sweet Pea said. 

"I have a boyfriend!" Veronica added. "I think!"

No, obviously she knew. Archie. Between the panic of discovering Lodgeville, the relief of finally getting a shower, and their adventure at Mallmart, she hadn't thought about him since this morning, though, and now she felt a little guilty. She subsided, kicking herself for missing sight of the person who was supposed to keep her good, who was supposed to keep her from being selfish like this.

"Not that I couldn't get a girl if I wanted, because I totally could," Sweet Pea was saying, with the healthy self confidence of tall, clear-skinned boys everywhere, "but she's actually our new hostage."

Joaquin buried his face in his hands.

" _Again_?" he hissed. "After Blossom?"

The name pulled Veronica out of her reverie. Now she regarded the three with new interest. So the Jason Blossom mess had happened in this world, too? God. Trust Lodgeville to contain all the bad of Riverdale, and none of the good.

"Yeah, well, not all of us quit the gang to stick our tongues down the throat of some Pembroke Excellence Prep Rhodes Scholar," Sweet Pea was now saying, with a grin that could have doubled as an obscenity.

"The sheriff's son, no less," Fangs put in.

Kevin. Oh, _double_ -God. She'd also forgotten Kevin. Suddenly, she missed him, the emotion coming on her in a great rush. She missed having someone to trade quips with and be friendly with in ways that didn't involve negotiating her family's interests. Where had Sweet Pea said he was? Pembroke Prep? Was that where Archie was? Was that where all her friends were in this universe?

For a moment, she'd been having, despite herself, so much fun that she'd been able to breeze past all the horrors of Lodgeville. Enjoy the stupid, classically small town delinquent antics of the Serpents. 

But now she realized that she couldn't just do that. Her friends were out there, in a world that existed beneath the long shadow of Hiram Lodge. If he'd desecrated the Southside and Fred Andrews, what might he have done to Kevin? To Josie or Cheryl? Maybe she had to go to this world's Hiram not to demand that he charm her and make her feel better about herself, but because she owed it to the Southside and the North to understand what made her father tick, what made his greed so relentless.

Maybe if she understood that, she could keep _her_ Hiram from doing it.

Also, she wanted to get back home. Mallmart and the Abode Depot were fine for an afternoon, but Veronica Lodge wasn't exactly the type to want that to be her life. She did want to stick by Alice and Betty, but since the Cooper women were living in dire poverty in this situation, what were the odds that they would be able to find a way back to their world? No, that would take a Lodge. If she went to her parents' house and used all the means the Family had at their disposal, then they actually stood a chance of finding the woman who'd sent them here and demanding that she send them back.

Although, Veronica thought, frowning, it wasn't like she had more to go on than 'a fair-haired collector who owns a lot of carpets and a cat.'

Now Sweet Pea was saying, "We need a ladder."

"A ladder?" said Joaquin.

"A tall one. Your tallest!" Fangs demanded.

"We texted Jug and he and Toni are coming with the truck, like, right now, so they'll pull up and you'll help load it," Sweet Pea said.

"Guys!" Joaquin said. "I can't just give you our tallest ladder!"

"We'll give it back, man," Fangs said. "It's just for today. Come on. A Serpent never betrays his own."

"FP said I could take a break!" Joaquin said. But he was already visibly wavering, worrying his lip with one hand, and after a few seconds' thought he said, "Fine. Tell Jughead to pull up to the third bay behind the store. They haven't fixed the cameras on that one yet."

Sweet Pea nodded and proceeded to text Jughead, and not long after that they were all hovering by the third bay, watching the battered Jones pickup pull up. Jughead and Toni Topaz were in the front.

"Yooo. Coop didn't even make it through the school day," Sweet Pea said, shaking his head like this actually made him sad.

"Yeah, like you're one to talk," Toni said, getting out of the truck and rolling her eyes. Jughead got out too, and they both went to help Joaquin and Fangs carry the very, very long ladder. Sweet Pea couldn't, because Veronica was still cuffed to him, so helping with this would be awkward for him.

"We're bringing Veronica Cecilia along?" Jughead said, as he passed them. "Really?"

He looked irritatingly amused at the thought of including Veronica, and she almost fired back at him, but her quip lodged itself in her throat and wouldn't come out. Which was very rude and uncharacteristic of it, she thought. Usually she never missed a chance to put Jughead in his place.

Even when it came to the question of the Southsiders losing their homes.

She swallowed hard now, watching them load the ladder onto the truck and squabble about how best to secure it. Jughead held his own in the dispute, as nervy and sarcastic as ever, so, clearly, it wasn't like he was especially brusque with her. He was just brusque. He had not one iota of charm, and didn't seem to want an iota anyway, and that put him and Veronica solidly on different planets. That made it easy for her to ignore and dismiss his planet. 

Sometimes she knew she was right about that. For example, she never wanted to know what made a person a Tarantino fan. But other times, maybe, she should have tried harder to respect his feelings. No, not his feelings. Forget his feelings. His home.

She cleared her throat.

"Does it have a length lock or something?" she tried. "The ladder, I mean. Some place to collapse it so it won't be so long?"

All of the Serpents stared at her.

"Does it have a length lock?" Joaquin repeated, rolling his eyes. "What kind of question is -- oh, hey. It does!"

Veronica tried not to look smug as they collapsed the ladder for easy transport.

Now Sweet Pea spoke up.

"See, the Princess isn't such a bad accomplice. And she picked some pretty good colors, too."

"I'll stick to green, like a Serpent," Jughead said wryly. "Anyway, I hope she's more imaginative than you are."

Sweet Pea looked affronted.

"Dicks are a solid and storied form of vandalism, Jones."

Okay. Now Veronica really had to ask.

"What are we even vandalizing?" she said.

"The brand new sign advertising Lodge's latest. Fair Forest Apartments," Jughead said, the words crisp and venomous. "He bought up the old murder house in Fox Forest, and a few other parcels, and he's working on getting the state senate to let him buy most of the forest itself. Putting pressure on anyone who has property near or in the forest to sell, too."

Veronica's dismay could hardly be put into words.

"But he tried that!" she said. "He built SoDale, and it was an awful idea. It didn't work--"

"Who says it didn't work?" Jughead said sharply. "It worked perfectly for Lodge. He bought people out of their homes with a pittance, razed everything, made a profit through investors, and pulled out before it all blew up in his face. So why not do it again? It's not like anyone stopped him the first time. Oh, and this time he's gonna put in a poor door."

"A _what_?"

"A door for the poor," Jughead said. His grin was a lethal thing. "See, Hiram keeps telling people, 'oh, you won't be displaced if you sell. You'll get an apartment at a lower price, a rent-stabilized price--'"

"But only if they sign on the dotted line, and agree to take a separate access road. Go into their new buildings through a separate door, so the full-price residents won't have to see them. Swear off any of the building amenities," Toni said, crossing her arms.

"Fucker," was all Sweet Pea said. "Fucker, fucker, fucker."

"And he's gonna destroy our forest to do that to people," put in Fangs. "People squat in the forest, man! The shelter's so overcrowded. But now he has Keller raiding all the campsites and stuff, and people are getting arrested and put away. For not having a place to live."

"So our whole world becomes a nightmare," Jughead finished. "To suit the whims of Hiram Lodge."

Veronica had only felt small a few times in her life before, but never before had she felt as small as she did right now. She was still holding her cans of spray paint, and now she pressed her nails into them so hard that her fingertips went white and her three-hundred-dollar manicure chipped in places.

She wasn't actually artistic. She could put together a killer outfit, yet couldn't draw to save her life. But she remembered what people had called her -- bitch, demon, evil -- and now she felt possessed with it.

It wasn't like they'd been wrong. They hadn't been wrong.

"Does it have his name?" she said.

"What?" said Jughead.

"The sign!" Veronica exclaimed, the words falling out of her almost hysterically. "Does it have his name?"

Jughead nodded.

"I call dibs on it," said Veronica.

-

It was a very large sign, and nothing that large could be truly tasteful. Still, Veronica thought she detected her mother's touch. The image of a sparkling high-end condominium apartment lobby. The smiling doorman. The exquisite choice of font. All of it completely dominating a corner of the forest that fronted the railroad tracks.

Veronica made Sweet Pea and Fangs uncuff her, ordered them to hold the ladder, and got to work. Sweet Pea was right that dicks were crude, but classic. But crude. Veronica was never crude. She merely employed clever wordplay

When she was done, everyone squinted at it.

"I...I am so impressed," Sweet Pea said, sounding admiring and very surprised about it.

"Is that reference to the Parker Posey cult classic _Party Girl_?" Jughead said.

"Yes," Veronica said modestly. "It's one of my favorites."

"I think that--" Toni said, pointing at a section in the corner, "isn't anatomically possible, but the degree to which it offends? That breaks a world record."

"I like how the 'i' over there has a heart," Fangs says. "It's the right flippant touch. You think an insult like that should be scrawled angrily, but it's somehow more insulting to make it charming like that. To add a heart."

"It's like people say," Veronica told him. "No devastating takedown should ever be delivered without a smile."

"People say that?" Toni said, looking confused.

Lodge people said that. Veronica smiled.

But before they could admire her work further, they heard the roar of a bike. Turning, they discovered Chic and Betty arriving on the scene. As soon as Chic stopped his bike, Betty was climbing off and making a beeline for Veronica, who blinked at her.

None of the others seemed surprised to see her. They only hailed her like an old friend. Chic followed behind her, more leisurely, pulling a hand out of his pocket and pointing at the sign.

"That is amazing," he declared. "That's the best thing I've seen in like ten years. Wait, give _me_ a turn. Somebody hold the ladder!"

Betty hardly looked at the sign. While the others debated which color to add -- more of Veronica's blue and purple or the green and silver Jughead had brought -- Betty pulled Veronica aside. This was fine by Veronica. She'd have to break the news to Betty sooner or later that she was planning on hunting down this world's Hiram Lodge. Not that she was looking forward to breaking the pact they'd made to stay together, to work together. Betty might be in leather and tight denim and flannel, all wild hair, but the worried set of her mouth told Veronica that this was still the same anxious, steely Betty she'd been fighting with only a little over twenty-four hours ago.

"I need to talk to you," Veronica said, just as Betty said, "We need to talk."

They paused for a half-second. Regarded each other. Then they each tried to speak at the same time.

"Chic knows who you are!"

"Look, I'm going through an identity crisis, B, but I need you to have faith in who I am--" 

Wait. What?

Actually, maybe it didn't matter. It was Chic. Veronica had only known him for a day and already she was determined not to care very much about him.

Again she opened her mouth, and again Betty did too.

"I need to go home to these Lodges before my dad does any more evil!"

"You need to go back to these Lodges before Chic does something bad to you!"

They stopped. Stared at each other. 

"Right," Betty said, after a moment. "Well. I guess it's just mom we have to convince, then. After she comes back from wherever she's been all day. Chic and I just checked, and she's still not at home."

Although Veronica was feeling warmth all through her at this clear, sudden resurgence of the B & V partnership, now she craned her head, confused. The teen Serpents were surprisingly wholesome hooligans in their own way, if you ignored all the minor crimes. But Alice had also gone out today to do something gang-related, and Veronica couldn't envision a woman like Alice Cooper playing chicken in a Mallmart. 

"B, what were she and FP even planning to do today?" she asked carefully.


	8. Snakesmith

By the time Alice and FP finished their shower, began to dress, became distracted again, resolved that, finished dressing, and left the house, it was almost time for their meeting.

It was to set out the parameters of a new deal. FP was maddeningly short about the particulars, and of course Alice had to pretend that she knew them already. So all she got out of him as they climbed onto their motorcycles was that the deal wouldn't go down at Byrdie's.

"Or," FP said mysteriously, "at the Poutine Pad just across the Canadian border."

"The Poutine what-now?" Alice said. She discovered that her helmet had a snake on it. Wait. No. That had to be FP's helmet. She would never be so ridiculous. She passed it to him without comment.

"It's gotta be neutral ground between the two parties," was all FP said. "You know that. So not Papa Poutine's restaurant--"

Alice's brain said, _Papa What?_ but Alice held her tongue this time, though it took herculean effort.

"--and not ours, either. And in this town, any ground that isn't our ground belongs to one man. And there's only one place Hiram would never defile with informants. It's too close to him, to that girl of his. Hell, I even got away with working there for a few months. Remember? When my first parole officer was on me to get a job?"

Naturally he'd still been to jail in this universe, apparently more than once. This soured the light mood that had descended on her after her third orgasm of the morning. She was almost disgruntled as they tore away for the road. Almost. It was nice to be on a bike again.

And she thought she knew where they were going. Only one person could ever be foolish enough to hire FP. Pop Tate, whose grease-filled wonderland was always the town's epicenter for bad decisions. 

But Pop's had been torn down in this world. The purple palace that replaced it had more ostentation than a maharajah's palanquin, and apparently all in service of one girl. Veronica Lodge. Alice could just imagine a small, spoiled Veronica having gall to order the helpless waitresses outfitted in those lacy pinafores.

Something occurred to her.

"You worked here. You have a lacy apron. Do we still have your lacy apron?"

FP shot her a long-suffering look.

"You know I only bring that out for Valentine's Day, Alice!"

She was overcome by perverse, appealing visions of Valentine's Day. She hoped he wore nothing under the lacy apron. Or was _she_ wearing the lacy apron? Ever single possibility was sillier than the last, and it didn't matter. It had been ages since she'd felt silly. Silly was a light-filled treasure chest that she'd buried years ago, forgotten the location and thrown away the key. But now it resurfaced. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling like her soul was too bright and her blood was too hot.

"Yeah, gimme whatever bird food's the flavor of the month," FP was telling the waitress now. "Alice? What flavor do you want?"

All of the ones he was offering, apparently. Even the ridiculous ones. To avoid saying this, she tapped at a name on the menu with her nail, not even caring which one. Most of her attention was on FP now. He was a catastrophe waiting to happen, hunched low in his overstuffed mauve armchair like a cobra coiled in an Easter basket. 

_You do not belong here, with the nice people and the ribbons and the organic yogurt_ , Alice thought. _Look at that jacket. They should run you out of here. Back home._

Then they could get him out of the jacket. Maybe into the apron. He'd look good in it. He looked good in everything, all the time, provided he wasn't trying to pass himself off as a clean-shaven upstanding member of society.

While she was considering how best to explain to him that he resist all impulses to shave again (and, really, that time she'd tried to have him arrested for murder -- would it have gotten so ugly if he hadn't acted like he was trying to hide something?), a shadow fell across their table.

"You're late," said a man Alice had never seen before. He was flanked by two other men. Like FP, all three men looked out of place in the yogurt palace, but they looked out of a place in a completely different way. No leather for them, only crisp navy suits and the kinds of rings that bullies wore so they could hit you and have it hurt. 

"We got here before you, old man," FP said evenly, rising and offering his hand. The man -- this Papa Poutine -- took it like touching it offended him. Alice didn't even bother to rise. She'd already decided she didn't like him.

"You decided to bring your woman to our meeting?" Papa Poutine said, as he and his men took their seats.

Alice raised a brow. No. No, she did not like him.

"You're lucky to have my woman at your meeting," FP was growling now, but she cut him off.

"Maybe FP hasn't explained to you how this goes," she said sharply. "But I'm the Snakesmith. I make our deals. If you don't please me, you don't get a thing."

She didn't know if it was true, but it felt like something this FP wouldn't contradict. Actually, deep down, she knew no FP would contradict something like that if she said it. FP had always had a wild, stupid affection for the most reckless side of her, had always thoroughly enjoyed her worst ideas. Now his hand squeezed her thigh briefly under the table and he let out a laugh.

"Them's the breaks, boys," he said, leaning forward on the table with a gleam in his eye. "You can bet she's on the trolley! Now are you gonna pitch us what you want, or should we cut out of here and call it a day?"

Papa Poutine did not look pleased, but he launched into his offer. He was a highly unpleasant, sexist man, but between the unpleasantness and the sexism a more or less cogent plan emerged.

Apparently there was no _Register_ in Lodgeville, and, really, without Alice to run it how could there be? No, instead the Lodgeville daily was a far more depraved animal. It was called the _Blossom Bugle_ , and run by that family. Probably using Gutenberg presses and ink made from the blood of innocents, if Alice knew the Blossoms. The _Bugle_ specialized in propaganda for Senator Hiram Lodge and his wife, Mayor Hermione Lodge, who were mutual enemies of both Papa Poutine and the Serpents.

"If I am going to pay out ten thousand to you, then I want a bomb planted," the old man said, between spoonfuls of his (no doubt disgusting) poutine-flavored frozen yogurt. "Set to go off when the offices of the _Bugle_ are at their busiest."

FP smacked the table.

"Now, hang on. I'm a snake, not a bloodhound. I don't do mass casualties, old man."

Papa Poutine leaned in.

"Then you don't get your payment. I want a message sent to Lodge that he can't miss, and a little moderate property damage isn't going to say it loud and clear."

"No deal then," FP spat.

But Alice thought of their three children. And of the general importance of prioritizing decent sums of money when they came your way and also you happened to live South of the tracks, in what could best be described as a 70s shag carpet nightmare. Sure, life with FP was more enjoyable than she'd ever let herself contemplate. But every life could use a little improvement. Even if maybe you had to lie, secure the money, and figure out the rest later on.

"Let's not get hasty," she said now, putting a hand on FP's arm and pulling him back. She turned to Papa Poutine, "Give us a few minutes, will you?"

Poutine's eyes, which had never strayed far from her breasts this whole time, now migrated up long enough for him to sneer and say, "Ten minutes. No more. I'm beginning to think you and Jones are wasting my time."

She dragged FP to the bathroom. His face was cloudy with anger. He leaned on the sink and splashed water on himself, which did nothing but make him attractively wet. Alice let him have a minute and then she spoke.

"I ask this not because I don't know, but because I want you to review the facts, FP," she said, making sure her tone was light, "but it occurs to me that, if we're even contemplating such a sordid little arrangement, there has to be a good reason for it. What was the state of our finances again?"

FP frowned and it twisted up his whole face. He hit one wall, actually cracking the cheap purple tile.

"You know damn well we don't have the money to bribe our parole officers into looking the other way, so we can leave this town and get out to Polly," he said, "and selling the house isn't gonna get us that cash, not with the way Lodge's chased away all the other buyers with his Fox Forest plans."

Alice blinked. Okay. That was unexpected. Was that the plan? Not whatever was happening with Hiram Lodge and Fox Forest. Polly. Polly, who no longer wanted to speak to her.

Was that, too, different in this world? Hope crowded out all her other thoughts.

But FP was still speaking, punctuating his words with an angry finger aimed at the wall beyond his head. 

"Look, Alice, I'm the guy that keeps 'em mostly fed, that shouts the laws in kids' faces. I'm not half as important as people say I am, and I know that. I know that for the Serpents it's always been more important to have people like you -- hell, even people like Penny -- to grease the wheels for us. But if you start signing us up to commit atrocities, Alice, then I've _gotta_ be the guy that puts my foot down --"

She wound her arms around his waist, pressed her face into the soft leather over his back. Not just to touch him, but because she needed to express her great fear and hope somehow. They were planning to join Polly. Polly probably wanted to see them.

"I want to be with my daughter," she told FP.

He broke off, a great breath shuddering through him.

"I know," he said, after a few seconds. "Honey, _I_ know, but--"

"I only think we should bargain a little," Alice said desperately. "Maybe he'll see reason if we plant it just outside, where it won't really hurt anyone--"

She'd been seriously willing to consider bargaining, because she didn't want to sign herself up for full-on domestic terrorism, she just wanted to lock in the ten thousand. But now she didn't care so much. Now this was more about convincing FP. Maybe in this world, if she played her cards right, she could have it all -- Chic and Betty, Polly and him. And whoever was crooked enough to work for the Blossoms probably deserved a little light maiming anyway.

"You sure this isn't about Blossom, not Polly?" FP asked, with a strange edge to his voice.

Alice blinked. Why would it be about a Blossom? Pressed up against him like this, she could feel his wiry strength, the worn cotton of his t-shirt under her fingers, and, if she brought her hands up a little, how his heartbeat pounded. He was worked up. She pressed down above his heart, half-hoping to calm him that way.

"FP--" she began.

Something clattered outside the bathroom window.

"Careful, you buffoon," she heard Papa Poutine say.

She detached herself from FP, who turned around now. With uneasy looks at each other, they crept up to the window to get a look at the alley beyond. Papa Poutine was there with his men, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and scowling as they scrambled to pick up an overturned trash can.

"Jones isn't such a man," Poutine muttered. "Born on a dirt floor, with a mongrel gang of kids. And he thinks he can call the shots."

FP wiped at his mouth now. His expression was ugly. It told Alice that there would be no deals here, not even for Polly, and her mind raced to come up with a way to reverse this opinion.

"So he plants the bomb, boss," one of Poutine's associates said now. "Maybe we just let him do it when the _Bugle_ 's empty. He still calls the shots for that, so he takes the fall if someone has to. With a rap sheet like his? They won't listen if he does try to name you."

Alright. So maybe this wasn't the way to win back Polly. 

Poutine said, "I don't care what happens to him, but I need him to fall in place. I don't like white trash that thinks its better than me. Maybe I'll take that woman of his. What do we know about her?"

Oh, now the deal was _definitely_ off.

"She's got a pretty, wild little daughter," said his second associate now. "High schooler, or she would be if she went to school. Got into it a few months ago with the gang that runs our pipeline, the Ghoulies."

Betty.

They had to mean _Betty_. 

Alice felt herself backing away from the window, but now FP put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. He brought a finger to his lips, signaling that they needed to just lie low and listen for a while yet.

"Get the daughter," Poutine said. "Get the woman too, if you can. Bring them to my motel -- the Royale in Centreville. Maybe I'll have a little fun with them. Then, once Jones does what I want, he gets them back. That'll teach him to have qualms."

Her anger hit her full-force. She felt her nails digging into her palms, something she hadn't done since she was a child. She thought she'd outgrown it -- it seemed something young people like Chic or Betty were more suited to. But she was as volatile and electric as she had been when she was young. She wanted to do something terrible and indiscriminate. That man was planning to hurt her daughter, to hurt Betty.

FP had turned now and slid down the wall to sit on the filthy floor. He had his hand at his mouth again, worrying his lip, contemplating something.

"We have to do it again, don't we?" he said.

He sounded hoarse.

"What?" Alice managed.

"Mustang. Clifford. All those upper-level Ghoulies they were working with, and that other one -- the English teacher or whoever he was." Now his hand migrated to his eyes. He was breathing hard. "I regret every day that business with the Blossoms, how even when the gun was against Jason's temple I could barely move--"

" _What_?" Alice said.

She tried to connect the pieces here. The Blossoms and Lodges were allies, and both enemies of her and FP. Enemies, too, of Papa Poutine. Was that why the Serpents had kidnapped Jason Blossom in this world?

But FP was just shaking his head, like he barely heard her.

"Alice, if it hadn't been for you, then that boy would be dead. But what you and Penny did to cover it up, to all those people--"

He broke off. His face was blank, but his chest was rising and falling fast.

"--be serious with me, Alice. You and I both know it probably wasn't Betty who killed Penny and Tall Boy."

Alice's mouth dropped open. She wanted to protest. She wasn't a murderer. Between the two of them, FP was a far more likely candidate for that. With his gang and his leather, his way of commanding a room. With that violence he kept barely tucked inside him all the time. Even in their, comparatively tamer universe, he had disposed of a teenage boy's body.

He had disposed of another body, too, because she'd needed him to. Then he'd slunk into Pop's and been almost unable to meet her eyes, though he'd reached for her hand. To comfort her? Or because he'd needed comfort?

She remembered how, when he was fifteen, he'd helped put Rascal Wilkin through the Gauntlet. When it was over, he'd stumbled out of the Wyrm and across the road, to the back of the Texaco gas station. She'd found him puking his brains out. FP always showed up for the violence, but that didn't mean he'd ever had the stomach for what he was doing. No, he really didn't make much of a murderer. She'd forgotten that. She'd spent so long wanting him without having him that her want had warped, become a kind of hate, and she'd forgotten. FP wasn't the one here who could most easily justify murder.

She closed her eyes. 

"That man, Poutine?" she said, voice very even. "He's threatening Betty. What do we do?"

"You're the idea girl, Alice," FP said roughly. "I'm at your disposal. I've got four bags of lye left, if we need that."

Alice considered this. It fell into place, easy as slipping on a jacket.

"No," she said. "It seems that my activities with Clifford Blossom led to some ugly business with Penny--"

FP nodded. So she'd guessed that right.

"--probably because she was going to rat," Alice decided.

"She always did like having leverage," FP said. He was still breathing hard. His face had the same curious blankness it'd had after he'd dumped the second body, that night at Pop's. Alice kneeled before him and grabbed his hands, ignoring the cold, slimy feel of dirty tile under her ripped jeans. She needed him here for this. She could get him here by playing frail and scared, but she didn't want to do that. Not anymore. FP wasn't an old fling that she hated in this universe -- he was her partner. And she could more than match him for all his flaws, so maybe it was better to stop pretending she was only a damsel in need of his rescuing. 

"We need to get rid of Poutine before he does anything to Betty," she said. "Now, Hiram Lodge is his enemy. A mutual enemy. So we need a murder like Hiram Lodge would do it. One that doesn't point to us."

FP shuddered again.

"Poutine and Lodge are the same shade of weasel, Alice. They're both gruesome. They both want to send a message. So that's how we'd have to do it."

"Fine," Alice said crisply. "So we send a message. Do you have the stomach for it?"

She was sure he didn't, and she didn't quite know what she was talking about. She only knew that that man had threatened to do -- to do _things_. To Betty.

FP clutched her hands still. She passed a finger over his ring. Their ring.

"I know a guy who wants in with the Serpents," FP said. "He'd do it, if we gave him the motel name. He's a nasty piece of work, but he wants to be one of us pretty badly. So if we keep promising him that, he might not be as much of a loose end as Penny was."

He looked like he regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.

But Alice knew she wouldn't regret any of this. That man had threatened her daughter. On a whim, she passed a hand lightly over FP's throat until he breathed out again, some of the tension leaving him.

"It's okay," Alice told him soothingly. "We have a plan, and Betty will be safe."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Show: introduces Papa Poutine to kill him off three seconds later  
> Me: introduces Papa Poutine to kill him off three seconds later
> 
> ~~a solid choice in a shabby season. in another world he insulted Pop! he can die.~~


	9. Best Friends in Another Life

When they finally convinced Toni and the boys to stop vandalizing and start heading home, Lodgeville's grey afternoon light was already taking on a blueish hue. Though the town remained shabby as ever, the occasional gas station and auto body shop along the forest edge had a luminescent sheen, neon signs gently dimmed by the fog. Mist rolled off an abandoned car along the access road. The Christmas lights on the Cooper-Smith-Jones front porch twinkled gently, welcoming them back.

Betty had had to ride with Chic to Hiram's new development, and would have attempted to abandon him for the truck on the ride back. But she couldn't. After he finished scrawling obscenities across the face of an eight-foot-tall subservient doorman, he began blatantly sizing up Veronica, and Betty didn't want Veronica forced into riding with him. So she stuck by Chic instead, letting Veronica ride with Sweet Pea, and when they arrived back home she headed straight for Jughead and Toni in the kitchen.

"I need you to help me," she said.

Either of them. She thought she could trust both of them. She hadn't lived this Betty's life, but she'd read clear affection for both Jughead and Toni in the pages of the diary.

"What do you need?" Jughead said immediately.

"Serpent vote?" Toni said for some reason. "I'll second whatever, you know that."

"No," Betty said, after a quick confused glance at Toni. "It's Chic. He keeps hinting that we need to keep an eye on our hostage--"

Jughead cracked open a jar of mayonnaise and ate a spoonful, because he was Jughead.

"We don't?" he said, through a mouth full of mayonnaise and spoon.

"I don't want _Chic_ to," Betty said. "I was hoping we could -- I don't know. Maybe distract him."

Jughead nodded, spoon still in his mouth, but it was Toni who stepped into the dining alcove and dragged in Sweet Pea and Fangs, who'd been submitting themselves to Veronica. She'd been ignoring a leering Chic in favor of scrawling sick burns on the other two boys in permanent marker.

"No," Betty hissed, low, so Chic wouldn't hear. "That leaves her _with_ Chic--"

"Relax, Coop," Toni said, holding up a hand. "God, you'd think it was the first time we distracted Chic for you."

Sweet Pea perked up.

"We're distracting Chic?"

"Sure," Fangs said immediately.

Jughead fished his spoon out of his mouth and dropped it in the sink.

"Betty, we're on it," he said grimly. "Even though we used 'asking him about the time he beat up his dealer' already--"

"And 'telling him we're lost and dark and need his guidance to be properly lost and dark,'" Fangs put in worriedly.

"I just like his weird creepy stories," Sweet Pea said, shrugging. "Let's go."

"Send in Veronica! I don't want her with him!" Betty hissed, as all three boys now descended on the dining table. 

In response, Jughead pulled up the chair next to Veronica's, hooked a leg around her chair leg, nimbly uncuffed her, then shooed her in the direction of the kitchen. Looking confused, Veronica rose and escaped to Betty. Chic opened his mouth to protest.

"Chic," Jughead said quickly. "I wanted to ask you some questions. About trauma, pain, darkness, and _scars_ \--"

Chic leaned towards him eagerly, now distracted.

God. It figured.

"When's your mother going to get here?" Veronica put in now, anxious to break the plan to return her to the Lodges to Alice. "What were she and FP even doing today?"

"Does it matter?" Toni said. She picked up the jar of mayonnaise Jughead had left out and put it in the fridge. As she slammed the fridge door shut, she added, "No offense, but Alice can shove it. Because if it goes wrong for her and FP, we all know there won't be any pleasing her, and if it goes right she'll celebrate by being, I don't know, happy in the most Alice way."

She eyed Betty now, very deliberately.

"Right, B?" she said.

_Toni and I have talked about mom_ , Betty realized. _Toni doesn't like mom not because of some makeout session, but because she and I_ talked _about mom._

Because they were friends. Because Toni cared about her. This world's Toni had joined the collection of teens who formed Alice's personal rogue's gallery: Jughead, Veronica, Kevin, Archie. All the people who Alice was likeliest to drag through the mud when she needed to show Betty's bad taste in friends. All the people who Betty valued because they knew about Alice and they knew how good Betty tried to be for Alice, and so they said, without judgement, _No offense, but your mother can shove it._

How odd -- that both this world's Betty and Betty herself kept trying to dissolve her pain into darkness. Webcamming, stabbing, a general rejection of being good. But that didn't work any more than being perfectly good did. The thing that had always worked best, that had always made Betty pull her nails away from her skin, was having people she could share her pain with.

And in this world, this Betty was working with Chic to someday abandon them. Betty's throat closed up for a moment. After she swallowed hard to clear it, she said, "Toni, why don't you come with me and Veronica to my room for a second?"

Both Toni and Veronica looked at her strangely, but both assented to follow her down the cramped hallway to her room. Inside, clothes were strewn everywhere, and Veronica began apologetically to pick them up and fold them. She was not especially good at it. Betty didn't think she'd had many opportunities to fold her own clothes before. So she put a hand on Veronica's and said, "Just sit down, okay? I need to tell you something."

And Toni, actually. And Jughead, later, if Toni didn't tell him. It wasn't fair for this Betty to feed the Serpents to the Lodges, even via Archie, just to further her and Chic's own aims. 

Betty tried to think about how to begin explaining this. Toni looked at her expectantly, one hand on her hip. Veronica sat gracefully on the edge of a bed and appeared just as expectant.

"Look," Betty began. "Both of you are my best friends."

She wasn't sure why that had come out first. Maybe because, in a way, it was true. Toni was this world's Betty's best friend, not _Betty_ -Betty's best friend. But this world's Betty was Betty in some ways. She was just Betty faced with more options for darkness than webcamming, wigs, boy-boiling, or stripteases.

Or. Oh god. Maybe Betty herself was just this world's Betty, with less violence but more imagination. Betty winced, and shouldered on.

"Toni, you're my best friend here because you kept this for me--" here she fished into her bag and pulled out her diary. Toni's eyebrows rose, but she otherwise let Betty finish. "--and you look out for me, and you trust me to look after myself."

"Yeah," Toni said slowly, like this should be obvious.

"And in another world," Betty explained to her, ignoring the way Veronica was shaking her head. "Veronica is my best friend. I know this sounds crazy, but she's my partner in crime, the light to my dark and dark to my light, the one who's seen me at my worst and _still_ wanted to invite me for milkshakes."

Veronica stopped shaking her head. She looked oddly touched. She folded her hands in her lap and said, "B..." 

Like that was all she needed to say. Which was fine by Betty. She'd missed B & V.

But now Toni was fiddling with the ends of her pink plaits.

"You are...gonna have to unpack that a little more for me," she said.

Betty sat next to Veronica and gestured for Toni to join her. When she'd been small, she and Polly had sat like this, girls sharing secrets in the closest of quarters. This seemed fitting. Toni took Betty's other side and leaned back on her hands, staring at Betty and Veronica like she hoped that whatever Betty said next, it would be good.

Toni might actually believe in an alternate universe, or a mirrorverse, or whatever this was, Betty realized. Toni was like Jughead that way, an eager fan of weirdness at every level. But maybe it was better to offer Toni an explanation that wouldn't make other people think she was crazy if she repeated it.

"This is going to sound insane," Betty said. "But Veronica and I -- we have something in common. We both have visions of another world. One where you and Jughead are best friends, and she and I are."

Now Veronica spoke up.

"This place isn't Lodgeville," she said, like this was important. "It's still Riverdale. There's no SoDale, no garbage processing plant--"

"So the Southside's doing okay there? In your shared hallucination or whatever?" Toni asked, with the kind of grin that suggested she could enjoy this pipe dream.

Veronica looked stricken.

"Well," she said awkwardly. "No. But... but maybe you have more Northside allies than you think."

She looked to Betty as if to nominate _her_ , but Betty just squeezed her hand. She was no Veronica Lodge when it came to the future of the Southside, but she hadn't been exactly great about it, either. She'd only liked the Southside as long as Jughead was with her. When it had seemed like the Southside might tear him away, no matter how many nice articles she wrote about his father, she'd found herself assuming the worst about the place. And she'd never even thought to sympathize with someone like Toni. She'd seen Toni only as a symptom of that bigger problem: Jughead elsewhere.

But, really, she'd seen Veronica that way too, at first. The boy had been different. But watching Veronica arrive on the Riverdale scene, darkly beautiful and prepared to reconfigure all the relationships around her with a blink, had prompted that same mix of admiration and competition. Betty supposed she _had_ been attracted and resentful all at once, like she was with Toni, falling headfirst into all the ways girl could become snarled up in girl. 

But that was beside the point. She wanted this Toni to know what this Betty was planning. She wanted this Toni to keep supporting her, but also to _stop_ her.

"Maybe it's a weird hallucination we share," Betty said now, "but it doesn't matter. This is the world we're in. This one. Twisted and dark and unhappy--"

(Not so different from hers.)

"--and no matter what world I'm in, I've been doing bad stuff here."

Veronica stared at her quizzically. Veronica didn't know about all of Betty's bad stuff back in their world. Maybe this was also why she'd wanted to have this conversation -- she'd wanted to tell Veronica, to treat Veronica like a friend again.

But now Toni sighed.

"Right. What the hell did your mother tell you?" she said.

"I--" Betty began, not wanting to be sidetracked by Alice.

Toni just held up a hand again.

"No. Listen. Do you make great choices, Coop? No. Is your brain _not_ -weird? No. But whatever Alice did to make you think you should keep punishing yourself, I promise she's wrong."

Okay. Well. Now Betty just felt like crying.

It wasn't even Alice. She'd always loved Alice so much that she'd just -- felt responsible for Alice. That was the problem. Betty Cooper assuming love like it was a job, or assuming her mother's pain like it was job, and wanting to do something, _anything_ to center herself when she failed at that job.

So it was her fault. She hated herself for trying to be perfect, but she hated herself when she wasn't perfect, too. When she let pain slip through. For mom, for dad, for Polly. It all meant she'd failed. Which meant that she didn't even want to try, she wanted to be dark instead, except 'dark' was no different than 'perfect.' Neither was the real Betty Cooper. Both were just Betty Cooper hurting Betty Cooper.

Toni was still talking.

"Look, I don't know what's going on, but maybe we should call Polly. I think between me and Polly we can get you out of this town if you need a quick exit strategy--"

She stopped and pushed herself up. Looked right at Betty.

"Oh my god," she said. "B, are you pregnant? Is it Lothario's? Malachi's?"

Veronica's mouth dropped open. Betty reeled back.

"No!" she insisted.

"Jughead's?" Toni asked, dropping her chin and squinting at Betty like she wasn't sure she could trust Betty to tell her the truth.

"Oooooh, it should be Jughead's," put in Veronica, like she was watching a TV show play out.

Betty shot her a look. Veronica was unrepentant.

"I'm not pregnant," Betty said. But then she considered something, slightly confused.

"Wait. Toni. What do you mean you can get me an exit strategy?"

This world's Betty wanted to escape her life as badly as Betty herself wanted to escape her own back in Riverdale. And she was willing to work with Chic and the Lodges to do it. But had this world's Betty been overlooking the fact that Toni could apparently help her get out?

Toni was now playing with the ends of her hair again, engrossed in the rose-colored strands.

"I'm just saying," she said, sounding a little embarrassed for some reason. "If we needed to hit up a certain ex of mine for cash, Polly and I could probably do it. I just know you don't want Blossom money, for obvious reasons."

Betty blinked at her. 

_That_ didn't make things any less confusing.

But now Veronica spoke up again.

"Wait. Where is Polly?"

Toni looked thrown off by the fact that Veronica even knew who Polly was, so Betty answered with what she knew. It was the same in both worlds, anyway.

"She got out, V. Left us. She decided she wasn't going to take it. Our messed up family, I mean."

Betty had always turned her rage in. Polly had always turned it out. Polly had never felt responsible. Maybe in some ways Polly hadn't been wrong.

Toni, meanwhile, was providing details.

"Polly fell in love with this -- okay. Honestly? It was a mess. This guy whose dad was trying to kill him, and Hiram Lodge was maybe trying to kill him... Long story short, to cover it up Alice and Penny did some stuff that Penny thought Alice owed her for, so she made Jughead a drugrunner --"

Toni waved her hand at a patch of air like it contained a bad smell, or a pile of sewage or something.

"--it got dark. It was a lot."

"It sounds like a lot," said Veronica, eyes wide.

"It was seriously, like. How much more darkness can we take?" Toni said. "And then there was always more!"

"On the whole," Veronica said, staring about the room, and possible all of Lodgeville beyond it like she was only now articulating something that had been bothering her for a while. "I feel like sometimes darkness just gets to be too much--"

"I _know_!" Toni said.

"It doesn't matter," Betty put in.

Darkness just happened. Pain just happened. And you had to weather it. You shouldn't try to run away and leave other people to deal with it, but maybe you didn't have to punish yourself for it either. Maybe it just happened.

She exhaled and felt her fingers loosen. She hadn't even realized what she'd been doing, but they'd loosened on their own. Maybe that was a plus.

"Guys?" Betty said, once she found her voice. "I came here to tell you something about myself."

She launched into the story of this Betty Cooper. Not the whole story -- the whole story, like her own, was maybe too sad. But how Betty had begun working with Archie Andrews, a _capo_ for the Lodges. How she was going to take payment from him and leave Jughead and FP and maybe her mother behind. Probably her mother, too. Maybe Alice was the one she'd been really trying to escape.

But she'd be escaping her friends and the people she loved, too, and the hurt in Toni's eyes was proof of that. This world's Betty had hurt herself so often that she'd stopped processing hurt the normal way. Stopped realizing the ways she could hurt others. Chic was like that, maybe. Chic saw hurt as something everyday and normal. Possibly Alice did too. Betty didn't want to be like that. She didn't want anybody to be like that.

When she finished talking, both Veronica and Toni were staring at her, riveted.

" _Capo_?" Veronica said. "How do you know that term, B--"

"You were taking money from Lodge?" Toni said, furious.

"Right," Veronica said. "Lodge. Right. About that."

Toni blinked at her.

Veronica drew herself up primly.

"B's done some confessing. Now I guess it's my turn. You'd better call the boys in. Only not Chic--"

"Chic already knows who you are," Betty said.

"Right," Veronica said again. She tucked a strand of hair behind one perfect ear. "Also," she said waspishly, "I don't care about him. But yes. You told me. He's known full well this whole time that I'm Veronica Lodge."

Toni brought her irregularly-painted fingers up to cover her mouth, momentarily stunned into silence.


	10. A Choice of Two Worlds

Life being what it was, and Lodgeville being an upside-down universe, the man FP introduced Alice to not thirty minutes after their meeting with Papa Poutine happened to be familiar to Alice. 

FP said his name was Slim Sangtapis. Alice hadn't known that. She'd only watched him bleed out in her living room. Sangtapis wasn't a transient in this world. He had a little olive-colored house in Greendale, on one of those cookie cutter cul de sacs that the poor always moved to in order to pretend they were properly middle class. He offered them each a beer, which Alice supposed was more hospitable than she'd been to him.

Then he took a phone call from a girlfriend and called the girlfriend several unspeakable things. So Alice stopped feeling bad for her role in his death. She did not wish Betty was here with them, but if Betty had been here, Alice would have made it a point to say, _See? And you thought I was the monster._

They purchased one death from him. Alice specified that it was to be a gruesome, mafia-style killing. Hiram Lodge-style. Sangtapis demanded that they wire eight thousand six hundred dollars to an account he gave them.

"Fine," FP said, like they had that kind of money. _Did_ they have that kind of money? Alice shot a look at him, but he was hitting a hand in a frenzied staccato against the cushions on Sangtapis' couch, eerily the same cushions Alice had back in her world. 

"Now, the other thing you could give me, if you can't cover the costs," Sangtapis said, leaning forward, "is Serpent rights."

"Fine," Alice said, rolling her eyes. That seemed like a better option. It kept Sangtapis from ratting by folding him into the gang, and it saved them money. But FP started, like someone had kicked him.

"Hold up!" he said. "No. No. You're still Serpent-adjacent, at best. There's a formal process to get in, and--"

"Yeah, I think I can pass your little Gauntlet," Sangtapis said, smirking. "Anyway, she already let me in. So I guess now the options on the table are you make me a Serpent, or you go back on your word. And if you do that, my price goes up. Up a hundred times. Is 86K too much?"

FP accepted this with an ashen face, and the deal was done. After they gave Sangtapis the address, they drove to the Greendale Bridge, to park their bikes on the banks underneath the bridge. When Sangtapis had carried out his work, he'd drive to the Greendale side and flash his lights three times, and from there on out they'd have twenty-four hours to either pay him or set up an initiation for him.

They parked their bikes and waited in silence. FP wouldn't look at her. 

Well, _that_ was very high and mighty of him. Like he hadn't just helped her call in a hit. Like he wasn't a gang member in _two_ universes. At least Alice had cleaned up her act in one.

"What is it?" she demanded.

Hal got like this too, petulant and chilly, complaining that his therapist said she was sucking the life out of him. As though he didn't heavily edit what he said to his therapist. She'd thought FP might be better than this, but maybe he wasn't. Maybe all men inevitably blamed you for their own failings.

FP said, guttural as anything, "You do not -- do _not_ \-- give out Serpent membership, Alice!"

"Oh, what does it matter?" Alice said. She examined the river rushing before them. It appeared to be blacker and smellier than her world's Sweetwater, which made her frown.

"What does it matter? Alice, this is the Serpents we're talking about!" FP said.

He was smacking something again -- the side of his bike. He always got physical so quickly. It only made Alice roll her eyes. His father had been like that, she remembered, and FP was better at putting the brakes on before he crossed too many lines, but it was still annoying. 

Alice said, "The Serpents are an inconsistent, violent rabble who obey six amorphous laws and share a dog. The Serpents aren't special."

FP stared at her.

"The Serpents are all some of these kids have! All I had after Fred Andrews kicked me to the curb. When you found me again, all that was getting me by was drink and the Serpents. And sure, Alice, both are ugly. If I could have kept our kids out, you know I would have. But between the gang and the liquor, I know which one's stood me better over the years and which one's gonna land me with the shakes."

"That's a failure of self-control on your part," Alice informed him.

FP spat on the ground. 

"That man we just hired is a monster. We just got out of bed with one monster, to get in bed with another. And you want me to give this one access to our turf? Kids to report to him, Alice. What if one of those kids is Jug? Betty?"

Okay, now he had her attention. When her eyes snapped to him, he was looking triumphantly furious.

"Yeah," he said. " _Exactly_ , Alice. There has to be a line, but you just crossed it."

She had largely kept her cool all day, but now the same panic that had engulfed her when Sangtapis had been bleeding out threatened to take control again. She tried in vain to push it down. She wanted to replace it with cool effectiveness, with an ability to persist, to survive at all costs. She needed to survive. One threat had unfolded to reveal another threat lurking just beyond, like a Russian doll if instead of smaller dolls you got gangbangers and murderers. 

"We have to get rid of him too, then!" she said, her mind running a mile a minute. "No loose ends! You know what? Chic will do it--"

Chic had actually already done it.

"Godammit, Alice!" FP said. "How are you gonna treat your boy like that? Our boy?"

She opened her mouth to reply and he cut her off ruthlessly, holding up a hand.

"Don't you dare say he's not my boy, either. I helped look after him when you moved back South. Used to let him and the girls come over anytime, even when it annoyed Gladys -- how are you gonna make him a murderer, Alice?" 

Now he had a finger pointed directly at her. He spoke slowly, but very clearly.

"Once they do some of the stuff you and I have done?" he said. "That's it. They don't come back from it."

For some reason, what flashed in her mind now was the tired way he'd said, _I'm not gonna let the three of you make the same mistake I made with Jason Blossom._

She'd found him faintly ludicrous for that. Her gratitude hadn't been entirely faked, and her panic and upset had been very real, but still. He'd claimed to know that Jason Blossom was his great mistake, and then he'd just gone and repeated the mistake.

So she, Jughead, and Betty wouldn't have to.

She reached for him now. He flinched away. Alice stared at him, amazed. 

"What?" she said, hearing her voice crack. "Now you don't want me?"

"I always want you," FP said. "I always do."

But he didn't sound happy about it.

-

They waited for what seemed like hours, Alice full of flat malice she for once couldn't seem to translate into venom. FP nursed the beer Sangtapis had given him, and when it was done kicked the bottle into the greasy river.

Then, around late afternoon, they saw the signal.

"It's done," FP said hollowly. "Poutine's dead. Now we pay up, or we're right back where we were with Tall Boy and Penny. A whole new breed of rat in the Serpents."

"I don't know what else we could have done!" Alice snapped at him.

God, this was the problem with the Southside. _This_. All the mounting desperation, all the awful choices. She thought she'd left that behind.

(Though a voice in the back of her head, a small one, suggested that she'd experienced all that on the Northside as well by now).

FP just pulled on his helmet and adjusted his bandana. 

"Look, let's just head to the Costlow, like we said--"

"The what?"

"The Costlow," he repeated. "We need eggs, Alice. And milk. And bread. We've got three kids to feed."

" _I_ know that," Alice said. 

Usually she was the one insisting on the necessary food runs, though. Usually she wasn't the one to forget. Usually she wasn't the one proposing two murders in two hours.

The Costlow was large, but badly-lit and much sadder than the Shop 'n Save back in Riverdale. FP grabbed a shopping cart that rattled horribly over the green and white linoleum, and took them down a long aisle with freezers full of ice cream and frozen peas and microwaveable dinners.

"Don't worry," he said gruffly. "No more of those damn Hamburger Healthers." He shook his head, and forced a laugh. "You damn well made sure I stopped eating those once you married me, huh?"

He was trying to patch things up. He was caving first. Actually, he'd always caved first, ever since they were young. Back then, Alice had enjoyed watching him struggle, enjoyed it because in the end it always led to him losing his patience, to another fight, and then she hadn't had to worry about liking him at all. But now she didn't want to do that. Even with hell of the Southside staring her in the face, all she could think was, _god. We keep going through these hells together_.

She put her hand on his, right where he was pushing the cart, right on the knobbly knuckles. When they reached the dairy aisle she said, for lack of anything better to say, "Four for a dollar? That's criminal."

It was. Everything seemed to be more expensive than it was at the Shop 'n Save, which made no sense because this was the Southside. If they didn't have cheap, what did they have?

"Everywhere else costs more," FP muttered now, picking up a dozen eggs and putting them in the cart. "You know how things have been in Lodgeville, Alice. Prices just keep going up, fast and faster. Not like our mayor or our Senators care, either."

That was probably true. So she did not regret making the crime look like Hiram Lodge did it. And now she remembered how, in her world, in Riverdale, Lodge had once tried to return to town years ago. He'd had breezed into Riverdale for some event of Mayor Handley's, claiming that he just wanted a nice safe place to raise his Veronica.

He'd also begun making discreet inquiries about buying up a plot of land for sale, one that had been earmarked for the Southside shelter.

Alice hadn't cared about the shelter. But she'd been more of a muckraker in those days, just because she'd had more energy. Against Hal's wishes, she'd done some digging about Hiram and published what she'd found. And the outcry Handley had put up over Hiram returning? Well, she thought that must have left Hiram with a healthy fear of the press. 

But maybe that had never happened in this world. Maybe _she_ was the piece that had kept Hiram Lodge at bay.

"What year did I move back to the Southside?" she asked FP. 

He told her.

God. It checked out. She might be the single most critical defense this Riverdale had never had.

_Alice,_ she thought. _You are so important._

Meanwhile, FP was checking dates on milk cartons. But now he spoke up again. "I still remember that like it was yesterday. Thought you'd wandered in out of a dream or something."

Despite the horrors of the day, he smiled now, and Alice detected a genuineness to it that was disarmingly attractive.

"Betty was so little, but so smart. Jug's age. Polly was so beautiful. The kind of girl you wanted nothing on the Southside to touch. And Chic, trying to be brave, even though he was frightened..."

"Frightened?" Alice asked sharply. Guilt bloomed inside her.

FP looked up from his milk cartons.

"Yeah," he said. "He was messed up for years, Alice. After what those nuns had done to him. I still think that was a hell of a thing you did for your boy. Standing by him. Me, I was all twisted up and selfish when you came back. Already losing Gladys. Hell, maybe a few years shy of losing Jug. So I thought you came back for me. Like you were gonna give me that second chance I always wanted. But you didn't. You came back because -- because even if it lost you Hal, you weren't going to leave your boy behind."

He stopped. Swallowed. His eyes glittered, dark and astonishingly gentle.

"I promised you I'd try to be better," he said. "I know I haven't succeeded in all of that, but I'm trying. And -- and you reminded me of something. Something important. You reminded me that we don't leave each other behind."

Now it was Alice's turn to swallow hard.

God. God. Maybe she could never have him and a trimmed lawn and gainful employment and a clean, bright house -- maybe all of that wasn't allotted to her all at once. Maybe she could only have him with sordid plots, in a town full of cigarette butts and broken glass, in a house that was probably crawling with black mold.

Now, though they'd done awful things together, she could no longer tell which world was the better option. It was no longer so clear. To be antiseptic and without him? Or here, surrounded by so much banal misery, but with him? With him and glad for it.

-

When they walked in with their bags of groceries, all the children were ringed around the table.

Not just their children -- Betty, Chic, and Jughead. But Jughead's little friends, too. And at the head of the table, hands uncuffed and clasped primly as though she were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner, Veronica Lodge.

"Snakesmith," she said, as soon as she saw Alice. "I remembered who I am. You're not going to like it, but you have to send me home--"

"But she's figured out a way to do it that will be fair to us, mom," Betty put in. "First of all, one of us will go with her for a bit, to appeal to her parents and make a case for the Serpents having been friendly to her."

Alice stared at them.

Chic, draped on his chair so that his elbows hung off the back, said lazily, "And, Princess Lodge, someone should go with you to make sure you stick to the story and don't rat us out, and I think that someone can be--"

" _Not_ you," Veronica said, as FP dropped his groceries in surprise.

" _Lodge_?" he said. "What the hell is going on here? Jughead?"

Jughead looked spooked for a moment, but Veronica came to his rescue.

"My name is Veronica Cecelia Lodge," she said. "You've heard of my father, I know. He's infamous. And rich. And I think I know a way to get you payment for sending me back to him, and keep him from knowing you kidnapped me at all--"

"Hold on," FP was saying. "Hold on. We didn't kidnap you. We found you--"

Alice cut in now. She didn't understand why Veronica was giving up the game, but it looked as though Betty was in on it, and anyway, she had a use for money coming out of the Lodge accounts.

"If I give you an account number, Veronica Lodge," she said. "Could you get, oh, I don't know. Eighty-six thousand dollars deposited in it?"

"Mom!" Betty said, as all her little friends gaped at Alice. Veronica, however, was unruffled.

"Absolutely," she said. "I remember my mother's card number, actually. I used it not that long ago for -- for something."

Good. Alice was seeing the pieces fall into place. They were framing Hiram for a murder Sangtapis had committed. So Hiram should _pay_ Sangtapis.

"Good," she told Veronica. "I have an account for you."


	11. Lodge Manor

Lodge Manor loomed on a mountain ledge above the town, a modern masterpiece of terraces, arching glass windows, and grandiose angles. It was a sleekly beautiful cathedral, a visual act of worship for Hiram and Hermione’s complete takeover of the valley below. 

Veronica, who often complained that the Pembroke was too small and too drafty, discovered that she hated it. 

Sweet Pea had been chosen to chaperone her, since he was, to quote FP, “big and full of nerve.” So, amidst all the preparations to return her to her parents, the Serpents had stopped by his house, so that he could change into a decent shirt and make himself presentable for the Lodges. 

He lived in a house so small that the plastic child’s playset in the yard almost dwarfed it. Veronica had watched from the car as he ducked to get in his own front door.

“Is that your slide?” she’d asked, when he’d returned to the Jones truck and hauled himself up next to her in the back. It was just him and her. Jughead was driving them over. Toni and Fangs had been sent to post themselves by the bank Veronica had directed her mother's money to, for reasons that weren't entirely clear to Veronica. Chic had managed to get out of doing any work at all, which appeared to be a recurring pattern with Chic.

Sweet Pea had just said, in answer to her question, “The slide's Max’s.”

“Little brother?”

Sighing, he'd reached for the wallet at end of his now-too-familiar wallet chain and pulled out a picture. It showed a gap-toothed child so decidedly cute that even his extremely Sweet Pea-esque scowl couldn't ruin it.

“Sage’s kid. Lives with a foster family in Centreville now. Judge said she wasn’t fit to parent because she couldn’t get him to school on time. Ever since Lodge bought out the elementary, all the kids have to go to Greendale. But something went wrong with his bussing, her paperwork wasn’t in on time or something. But we get him on weekends.”

“Oh,” Veronica had said. 

So over in Centreville — another casualty of the Lodges. This made it hard for Lodge Manor to provoke anything but bile and guilt, even if they didn’t pull up to it directly. Instead, Jughead took a back road that left them perched slightly above it, on a peak that gave them full view of its gardens, pools, and multiplicity of terraces. Lodgeville, in the valley and along the slopes further below, paled in comparison. 

"They don't really want to mix with us, do they?" Jughead said to her. He sounded sulky. Veronica knew he had no desire to kowtow to a Lodge, but somehow he communicated that regular old hangouts with Lodges weren't his preferred pasttime either. She frowned.

"Okay, listen--" she began.

"When you first came to town, Alice said your parents talked all about wanting to return to their roots. I guess this was what they meant. The town propping up the Lodges. Literally."

Veronica thought uncomfortably of her planned article in the _Register_ , and her rebuttal died in her throat.

 _It's perfectly normal to want a home away from the rabble, though,_ she told herself, as she and Sweet Pea walked down the winding back road to the manor. _Like our house on the Cape. Or our house in the Vineyard. Or our house--_

Oh. Wait. Maybe the problem was that 'normal,' for the Lodges, didn't mean 'not terrible.' It was perfectly normal for the Lodges to have a compound to keep the townies out. It was even beneficial, in many ways. But Jughead was right: it was also a critical reminder of how the Lodges really viewed the town, as second-class, something to be excluded if it wasn't being used for their convenience.

Veronica, being Veronica, was let in as soon as she waved at the stupefied guard. Sweet Pea trailed her in through the massive gates -- embarrassingly more ostentatious than even the Blossoms' had been -- and down much of the long drive until the guard, panting, caught up with them and insisted that Veronica wait for her driver to take her to the main house.

In the foyer, which was all gently-tinted marble, sweeping stair, and great chandelier, just like their old penthouse, were her parents. Her mother, effortlessly beautiful in a pale blue Grecian-style dress, was not pleased.

"Veronica," Hermione said. She snapped the name out into her drink, as though it had been stuck in her throat and was starting to annoy her. Then she began speaking like she was inclined to casually sink her teeth into her daughter's heart. "How nice to _see_ you. We were going to wait for the ransom demand rather than show our bellies to your kidnappers up front, but we did have people out looking for you. I now see we shouldn't have bothered. Apparently, you weren't kidnapped at all."

"Be kind to her, _corazon_ ," Hiram said. He was in his usual crisp bespoke, a regal navy that suited him. 

"Who knows," he said mildly, "what trauma she has suffered? Perhaps at the hands of this--"

He gestured vaguely at Sweet Pea. This, of course, was how they greeted Sweet Pea. Lodges knew all the rules of decorum, but when they were irritated they often couldn't be bothered. 

Veronica put a hand on Sweet Pea's arm.

"This is one of my rescuers, daddy," she said. Her voice reverberated through the grand foyer.

Hiram leaned forward and cupped his ear with a hand, like he hadn't quite heard.

Oh dear. There was nothing for it. Veronica knew what she had to do.

The occasion called for tears. She didn't feel like crying. She'd passed out of total misery with the vandalizing, and was now well on her way to anger. But nothing was a more effective lever against Hiram than well-placed, well-calibrated tears. Veronica had learned very young how best to force them out of herself.

She launched herself, sobbing, at her father.

"Oh, daddy! Daddy! It was _awful_! I don't even really remember how they got me! The last thing I remember is--"

She reeled off something Betty had shown her in a gossip magazine. A beach. A dog. Nick St. Clair, of all people. This universe's Veronica had truly terrible taste. Veronica judged her more than she'd ever judged the Cheryls or Josies of the world. 

"--but then I ended up in some kind of gang war!"

"Veronica," her mother began, sounding annoyed.

But Hiram was the one to convince. Hiram was always the one to convince. As Veronica flung her arms around him, his hands came up possessively in answer. The scent of his Tom Ford Tobacco Oud enveloped her.

"What happened, _mi alma_?" he demanded. "Did they hurt you? How did you get back?"

"There was this woman," Veronica insisted. "I think one of your enemies hired her to take me. Her name was Penny Peabody--"

This was Sweet Pea's cue, and he didn't miss it.

"Penny's been a thorn in the side of our gang for a while, sir. We opposed her plan, things came to a head, we won, and we voted to bring back your daughter."

Hiram stiffened. His fingers played on the emblem on the back of Veronica's borrowed jacket.

"How illuminating," he said, the way people said it when they were asked to consider other people's family trees, or the plight of especially sad persons living on other continents. "The Serpents haven't exactly been my greatest fans over the years."

"And I suppose you'll want payment," Hermione put in.

This, too, Sweet Pea had been prepped for.

"From Veronica?" he said. "No. She already paid."

Hiram took in a sharp, enraged breath. Veronica hit him lightly, already knowing where his mind was headed and not at all interested in having anyone follow him there.

"Not like that, daddy! I was wearing my pearl belt with the Chanel charm, and I gave them that. And--" Jughead had insisted that this line was too much, but Veronica liked it, so she took the chance to throw it in now, " _I_ was the one to help broker a peace between the two sides of their gang. I mean, I _was_ in the model UN at Spence."

"Seriously, Veronica?" said her mother, whose ever-shifting moods meant that she periodically lapsed into a tiny interior deadness that guaranteed she bought none of Veronica's BS.

Veronica tuned her out. Half the battle was picking your audience correctly, so she appealed to her father, casting her eyes up at him adoringly. This didn't seem to quite convince him.

"You defused a gang war using skills you learned in high school?" he asked.

"They live in such terrible conditions, daddy--"

"Well, I can believe that," Hiram noted.

"No one ever taught them _diplomacy_."

"Naturally," said Hiram.

"I think I changed their lives," said Veronica.

"You are a marvel, _m'ija_. You are a miracle."

"I know."

Hermione downed her drink. 

"I guess your little friend can just go, then," she said, when she'd swallowed.

"No!" Veronica said quickly. "About that. Sweet Pea, why don't you make yourself comfortable. Mom, daddy, I'd like to talk to you--"

It was very important that she not be separated from Sweet Pea. The Serpents _had_ voted on her plan to return to her family, and in particular they had voted on how best to install someone to keep an eye on Veronica and -- by extension -- the Lodges. Though Veronica had insisted that she could be their longterm mole, FP, who didn't trust her, had seen this as too good an opportunity to miss. He agreed that it would be best to send her in with a chaperone. 

Alice had slyly suggested that the chaperone have a very critical piece of leverage over her.

Fangs, Sweet Pea, and Chic had voted in favor of the pipe bomb, though the former two boys had done so with apologetic looks at Veronica. Betty, Jughead, and Toni had voted against, with very strident and (Veronica thought) sensible explanations for why it was a terrible idea. FP had abstained from the vote.

"I'm the judge. Judges can't make a decision like that. That's a law," he'd said, completely misrepresenting everything about judges and also the law.

So in the end, Alice had cast the tiebreaker, insisting that Sweet Pea conceal it beneath his shirt and detonate if Veronica betrayed them or tried to get rid of him. 

"Only," she'd said sweetly, "not near too many people if you can help it. Put in a fancy topiary or something."

Veronica thought Alice had suggested this because she and Betty might really need Sweet Pea here, to act as a line to Veronica herself. But it was hard to tell. Veronica had always received the impression that Alice Cooper was the kind of woman no one could shame, because before anyone could point out a flaw, there would be Alice Cooper, viciously owning it. This had been Betty's mother as a mere Northside housewife, with suburban mom flaws. But now she was a gang leader. 

She made a terrifying and effective gang leader. She'd landed Veronica with a truly dangerous minder. Veronica looked at him now.

 _Give me a second,_ she tried to say, with her eyes. _Just a second._

There was no guarantee that Sweet Pea would understand, because they came from basically different planets. But he nodded slightly, like it was fine.

Veronica tugged her parents a little ways off, speaking in a low voice.

"Look. I’ve noticed something. The local talent here, daddy? It’s not lacking. These people are willing to do a lot. I’ve picked Sweet Pea out because I think he could have great capacity for loyalty."

Hiram made it a policy to always look interested in people's ideas initially, if they happened to be related to him or played poker with him or could offer him a very large investment. Now he lifted his brows and dipped his chin, his whole face a handsome, dramatic signal to please go on.

"Another _capo_ for you, Veronica? A singular idea," he said. He might have been making fun of the idea or he might be preparing to fold to it -- it was hard to tell. Hiram's interest was always calibrated to suggest both options. That was the mark of a good businessman and a good poker player.

Veronica's mother just rolled her eyes. 

"He'll have to be tested," Hermione said, fully prepared to send Veronica's plans crashing down to earth. "And your current one isn’t doing so well. He was brained by some hoodlum while out on that task you set him."

It took Veronica a moment to realize who her mother might be referring to. Betty had told her about meeting Archie, about Archie being whole and handsome but decidedly cracked in this universe. Betty had even mentioned the word _capo_. But Betty knew nothing of the Family, and Veronica had assumed Chic had simply suggested something silly to her. The Archie of Lodgeville must have been acting strangely because he was deluded with grief over his father or something. He couldn't be her _capo_. She loved him. She didn't want to use him like that.

But now it all started to line up.

A _capo_ never wavered in his loyalty to you. Neither did an Archie. A _capo_ gently reminded you when a plan might go awry. So too did an Archie. A _capo_ was supposed to retain honor and decorum and decency, so that his goodness could reflect on you, could make you good by association. That -- that was Archie to a T.

 _Oh, no_ , Veronica thought. _I thought I loved Archiekins so much. But this is what I was grooming him for._

As if in answer to this thought, she heard the firm tap of expensive shoes on the marble. Archie appeared at the top of the stairs, handsome, clad head to toe in a more muted navy than her father's, his grin so radiant that it seemed to rewind the whole day back to a bright morning.

"Veronica! You're safe!"

"She engineered her own return," Veronica's father said, with a crisp grin of his own. "She is a dream."

"You're incredible," Archie said, coming down to meet her.

"She's my little immaculate _palomita_ ," Hiram said.

"You're Hiram's amazing holy pigeon thing," Archie agreed.

"Dove," Hiram corrected sharply.

Archie wilted.

"Sorry."

Veronica felt like gagging. And for some reason she felt like she had to shoot a look at Sweet Pea, who up until now had been making an excellent argument for _capo_ -hood by just standing there looking blank and tall and impressive. But now he looked the way she felt. Sweet Pea, Veronica instinctively knew, was the type to not think much of people pleasers, and Archie's Hiram-pleasing was the worst version of people-pleasing she had ever seen.

Sweet Pea's complete distaste could have slammed Archie and Hiram up against a wall.

"Who's this guy?" Archie said now, noticing him for the first time. And clearly noticing the distaste. Maybe some people were just destined to dislike each other in all universes, Veronica thought.

"Sweet Pea is a friend," Veronica said smoothly. "Maybe we should all get to know each other. Me, you, Sweets. I should retire to my room anyway. This has been exhausting."

She wanted to know what was happening with this Archie, why he was in residence with the Lodges. And she wanted to give Sweets an opportunity to get information about these Lodges out of Archie. And she wanted to get information about these Lodges out of Archie herself -- she and Sweet Pea could just do it together. There was something satisfying in that, for some reason. Sweet Pea might be dangerous, but he was also a walking reminder not to be taken in by her parents. 

Plus, if she left him, he might blow up a hedge or worse. She didn't actually think he would do worse. He was a vandal and a delinquent, but he was no Alice Cooper. Still, Veronica didn't want to chance it. 

But now her father said, sharply, "I think it's a little early to let this gangbanger into your private suite, _mi alma_."

Veronica took a deep breath, and prepared to attempt something tried and tested and guaranteed to win with this audience. 

She stamped her foot and launched into a full-on Veronica Lodge tantrum.

-

She got her way eventually, because finally she was no longer a hostage. Once again she was a Lodge, strong-willed, sulky, and powerful as a sudden thunderstorm. The allure of this, she realized, as her father caved with a panicked annoyance and her mother gestured for the maid to bring more drinks, was that Veronica Lodge was a deeply selfish creature, but she could turn her selfishness into something as long as she was still a Lodge. Her parents indulged her selfishness. So it stopped looking like a flaw, and became a tactic.

But outside the Lodge Manors of the world, in the places where people were desperate, it was decidedly a flaw. As they walked down long, magnificently-paneled corridors to her suite, Veronica ended up looking to Sweet Pea to see how he'd taken the whole tantrum. He looked enraged, which worried and infuriated her.

Of course, it might not be her that was causing his rage at all. Archie was so close behind him that he was tripping into Sweet Pea with every third step. Archie seemed to be doing this deliberately. So Sweet Pea might just be contemplating Archie's death or something. Veronica rolled her eyes at the both of them. She was slightly more on Sweet Pea's side despite herself, but in general there was such a stink of masculine competition that really she was on _her_ side, the side of a girl already overwhelmed, who needed both boys to be much less stupid.

"Ronnie," Archie hissed, as though Sweet Pea couldn't hear. "What about this street punk even interests you?"

"We'd all like to know that," Veronica's mother said. She was the one leading them to their suite, her pristine blue nails digging into Veronica's arm no matter how many times Veronica tried to shake her off.

"I have a sudden idea," Hermione said, in the voice of a woman who had been mulling something over for at least ten minutes. "You're so _traumatized_ , Veronica, that I think you need some comfort. Why don't we invite up one of those townie friends of yours? The one that's just adored you ever since you were nice enough to issue an invite to your seventh birthday party?"

Veronica blinked at her.

"Townie friends?"

Kevin, maybe? Josie? Please. Please let them be fine and not dead or something.

"Your father has some people over tonight, to discuss his reelection campaign and his acquisition of Fox Forest," Hermione said. "All the important people in this town. The _Bugle_ people. The Sheriff. My legal counsel. One of your little friends also showed up."

But now Veronica had stopped focusing on the friends. Something even more horrible prodded at her. 

"You two were proceeding with your world domination plans while I was off being kidnapped?" 

"Don't be dramatic," Hermione said, as they came to a stop before a pair of wide double doors. "You know your father and I have put a lot into the Fox Forest project. And we could look for you at the same time. Not everything has to stop for you, _princesa_. Now, I’ll send your friend up shortly. Try not to fall apart with tears, Veronica. No one but us knows about the kidnapping.”

Then, with a click clack of heels on the fine floor, her mother was gone, leaving Veronica staring after her in frustration. Archie hovered next to her, a watchdog without the common sense to know what he should be watching. Sighing, Sweet Pea leaned forward and pushed open the double doors. 

Inside her suite, ceilings soared and fires crackled in not one but two fireplaces. The suite was what Veronica might have called _darling_ in another life or maybe a day ago, built on multiple levels, with sunken spaces for watching television with friends, second story levels for a library and a collection of Lana Marks Cleopatra bags, a dais for the bed, a set of great doors leading off to a bathroom, another hinting tantalizingly at a walk-in closet. After the cramped ugliness of the Jones house, this space seemed to invite her to breathe, to relax.

Unfortunately, she couldn't. 

She barely had time to pull a chest-to-chest Archie and Sweet Pea apart (how had they even gotten like this in such a short time?) when there was a sharp knock on her door.

"Come in," Veronica called, and she thought, _be Kevin. Be Josie--_

Cheryl Blossom strutted in. Veronica would have been disappointed, only Cheryl was unmistakably, comfortingly Cheryl, from the coolly unimpressed way she regarded the suite to how she shoved Archie and Sweet Pea aside with a brusque, "Move!" 

She marched right up to Veronica. Her false lashes swooped heavenward, and her eyes regarded a spot slightly above Veronica's head. This made it hard to look her in the eyes. This was probably Cheryl's plan. Cheryl was a few inches taller than Veronica and Veronica had always suspected that Cheryl liked it that way and exploited every opportunity to remind Veronica of it. 

"Oh, Veronica," she said, monotone. "It's so nice to have you in town. There. I said it."

Having said it, she shoved past Veronica to the couches beyond, turned around, regarded Archie, sneered, sneered also at Sweet Pea, and fluttered onto a tuffet. Her cherry-spangled black romper clung to every curve, and Veronica frowned when she saw Sweet Pea very obviously appreciating this.

Cheryl exploited the opening.

"Veronica picked up a new friend. Tell me, Ragamuffin Rambo, what's the connection between you and Gloria Vanderbilt here?"

"I want to know that too," Archie put in mulishly.

"Quiet, no one cares what you want to know," Cheryl said. She patted the tuffet next to hers and beckoned at Sweet Pea.

Veronica wanted to hate her. She really did. But Cheryl was still speaking in that toneless voice of utter loathing. And maybe it was Lodgeville, maybe it was seeing everything people like Veronica had wrought on this town, but suddenly Veronica wanted to be surrounded by a million Cheryls, girls who would take every single opportunity of remind her how selfish she was, because it detracted from how selfish _they_ were.

Good old honest Cheryl. Who would probably be dying to tell Veronica every single awful thing these Lodges were planning and had ever planned. So that Veronica could develop some idea of how to stop her Lodges.

"Cheryl," Veronica said. "I want to get changed--"

"Understandable," Cheryl said, raking her eyes over Veronica, like her gaze was a police searchlight hell-bent on finding crimes of fashion. 

"--will you come help me for a second?"

"Oh, I die to be your handmaiden, Veronica," Cheryl said. She said it as though Veronica had suggested she wash her hair in the sewage-tinted Sweetwater.

Sweet Pea still looked disgruntled at this, but Veronica honestly didn't care.

"Princess--" he began now.

"Don't go off like a _bomb_ just because I cut in on your time with Satanic Satine," Veronica warned him. "We'll just be in the next room."

"Yes," Cheryl said, now full of false cheer. "Your palatial walk-in closet. Such a joy to review all the many things you own, Veronica."

So now Sweet Pea had the gall to look amused instead. Veronica shot him a dirty look as she dragged Cheryl into the closet. 

It was a room larger than any version of the Jones living room, with every door paneled in mirrors so that they seemed to have walked into an inverted diamond. When Cheryl crossed her arms and looked sourly at Veronica, easily forty more Cheryls did the same.

"Listen," Veronica told her, wanting to get down to business. "I know you hate me."

Cheryl examined her nails. "Whatever do you mean? I agreed to come help you get out of those J.C. Plenty gladrags you're wearing. That's probably the kindest thing I could do for you." 

"Cheryl," Veronica said slowly. "Please. It's fine. I hate me too right now, and I need someone who won’t be bought by the Lodge glitz on my team to tell me what--"

Cheryl cut her off, tone creeping up waspishly now.

"Well, how can anyone trust that? You are the Lodge glitz, Veronica. You're so charming that even you think your cruelties should be automatically forgiven--"

Briefly, dismally, Veronica thought of how annoyed she'd been when Jughead had complained about the Southsiders being evicted. That was how she'd seen it. Mere complaining. She'd assumed that he should simply trust in her to know the best way forward, no matter the consequences for him, because she was Veronica Lodge and she _was_ charming.

But glitz like that wouldn't save a place like Lodgeville.

Cheryl was still speaking.

"Say what you will about _my_ peccadilloes, at least I don't try to plaster them in false niceties. Which does beg the question of why I'd ever help you." 

Here she gave a Cheryl Blossom smile, one that implied any second now she might open her mouth and eject a maelstrom of darkness and also cause blood to rain down the walls, if only she could figure out the trick.

"I? Am no one. As you have often reminded me. The daughter of a social climber and a worthless drug dealer gone MIA. The adopted daughter of the most noxious man in Lodgeville."

"What?" Veronica said, trying to parse what this meant about Cheryl's family.

But now there was some commotion in the room outside. After the sound of some muffled exchanges, someone rapped twice on the door of the closet.

"Yoo hoo!" came the voice of Penelope Blossom. "Cheryl? Veronica? Are you in there?"

"You'd love for me to be in a closet, wouldn't you, mother!" Cheryl hissed in reply.

Her only answer was the somewhat nervous voice of Hal Cooper.

"Hang on," he said. "Hang on one darn minute. I hope you girls are decent!"

"Veronica's going to disappoint you," Cheryl snapped.

But her mother and Hal still poked their heads in. Penelope, seeing Veronica, immediately looked horrified by her clothes, but she plastered this over admirably.

"We were wondering when you'd be back in town!" she said. "So _lovely_ to see you." Then, in a more dangerous tone, "I hope our Cheryl is being pleasant?"

Hal chuckled. "I'm sure she is. She's my little girl, aren't you, Cheryl?"

"Absolutely not, Harry Belafakery," Cheryl said.

"Cheryl!" Penelope hissed.

But Hal just said, hurriedly, "Sure is unique, isn't she? Our Cheryl. Still, happy to have her. Happy to have her. You know my other ones were such a disappointment."

He lowered his voice dramatically.

"I hope the younger one was at least useful to Archie, and to you. You know, for your plan."

"And if you could put in a nice word for us with your _father_..." Penelope said now, trailing off.

Veronica blinked at them.

"I'm not at all attached to my other girls," Hal continued, misinterpreting her silence. "There’s no Blossom on any of them. Just none. Both of them are snakes like the mother."

"Bad blood," Penelope intoned.

But Veronica hardly noticed this, too busy thinking, _my plan? I have a plan?_


	12. Nighttime Ritual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey, that rating went up again.

Chic was very interested in Sangtapis.

This bothered Alice. She'd raised this Chic. She'd have thought he wouldn't have anything to do with Sangtapis. But when, at dinner, she went over everything that was happening, Chic just said, "I know that guy. I can get us the money."

"Like hell you will!" FP said, hitting the table so hard all their plates clanged.

FP's plan was for Toni and Fangs to tail Sangtapis, to photograph him withdrawing the money so that no one could say he hadn't been paid. That, FP was confident, would keep him from having a claim on the Serpents.

"But then we won't have the money," Chic said, like FP was stupid. "I'm just saying. I could go get it. I know what to do with a guy like that."

In some ways, he was his mother's son, and it had to be said that Alice would impose relentless misery on a thousand strangers to see him happy. But FP's outrage over the thought of taking this any further played in her mind, and the Chic she wanted most of all was not a Chic who killed a man in desperation, who left Alice mopping up blood with shaking hands, fearful that he'd be taken away by the police if anyone found out.

FP had been right about keeping him out of it. Alice couldn't hold what Chic had done against him, but it was better to not let this Chic repeat it. Now that she could think a little more clearly, she could see that.

"Listen to your father," she told Chic.

It was such a strange thing to call FP. She'd always felt like even suggesting it might scald her tongue. But nothing happened except that Chic became sulky, and, shoving his plate away, said, "Fine. Whatever. I had something to do tonight anyway."

After he stood up and stormed out of the house, Jughead quietly took his plate and combined the contents with those of his own plate, so he could enjoy two dinners. FP stared at this as though it was something to be fond of.

"Sweet Pea will make sure Veronica's okay, right?" Betty said, as she finished her own food.

FP chewed and swallowed before answering.

"Sweet Pea's gonna have to make sure Sweet Pea's okay. That boy's the bravest I know, walking right into a den of--"

"--snakes?" Jughead offered.

FP scowled at him.

"Vipers! I was gonna say vipers! _We're_ the snakes."

"Vipers are snakes," Betty said, confused.

FP stared at her.

"You're very smart," he told her, after a few minutes. "I'm proud of you."

"Thanks?" Betty said.

This was altogether more substantive dinner conversation than usually ever involved the children in the Cooper household. Betty and Chic had conversed among themselves a few times, while Alice and Hal had fought with steely politeness (Alice) and explosive rage (Hal). And when Polly had still lived at home, dinner was for interrogating her and Betty on their grades, friends, and extracurriculars. Hal also made the occasional moan in their defense that was less about how he wanted them not to be interrogated, and more about how he felt not enough attention was being paid to his scintillating remarks about his own happiness and health.

FP, however, just seemed to have few barriers about what to tell children. He discoursed as the mood struck him, secretive about Papa Poutine but open about Sangtapis, free with praise for the children's intelligence while also quick to rebuff Jughead for his dumbest remarks. There were no rules. Dinner was being run by an unpredictable, attractive barbarian who was worryingly obsessed with snakes.

Alice took the first opportunity to dismiss Betty to the kitchen to wash dishes, Jughead to their dank little bathroom to clean it out, because it needed cleaning. Order restored. And she didn't even need to do anything herself.

"You gonna make me clean out the basement?" FP put in, as the clatter of Betty washing dishes filled the room.

They had a basement?

"Why?" Alice said, squinting at him. "Is it dirty?"

A seed of a smile played on his lips, but it never bloomed into anything. After a moment he dropped his head in his hands and sighed. The green-hued light of the dining alcove shaded his hands and whipcord forearms.

All at once, the day hit her. It had been hitting FP continually, but Alice had been putting off the true dread and dismay, the deepest wave of loathing for this life and these choices. In the Cooper household she could put this feeling off indefinitely. She'd made a home so marvelously antiseptic that it was easy to banish deeper emotions from it, like they were parasites or bacteria, like the answer was only a generous application of bleach. 

Until recently. Or, no, until a year ago. The first truly terrible return to a life of uncertainty had been a year ago, a vicious argument with Polly that hadn't felt terrible at all then, because she and Hal had ended it united and powerful. 

_This Jason Blossom will lead nowhere good_ , Hal had said, for his own reasons.

And Alice had agreed, for her own reasons. The great fear then hadn't been the Southside -- she'd been confident that she'd vanquished the Southside -- but losing another child, seeing Betty and Polly smudge through the salt circles of control Alice had lovingly imposed on them, and escape. Outside the Cooper household, things weren't safe. Things could go south fast. You understood that if you were from where Alice was from.

This was why she'd always seemed like such a crazy person to Hal and the neighbors, she thought. They were not from the Southside. They didn't understand. They didn't know how events could pile on you and drag you into danger, faster than a blink.

"Chic might do something stupid," Alice confessed. She said it low, so Betty wouldn't hear. But it still bubbled out.

FP sighed. He already knew Chic might do something stupid. Of course he did.

"I know I'm not his natural father, but I care about that boy," was all he said back. 

Of course he did. Desperation always ran side by side with care, with love. And then it rendered love useless. FP would understand that.

"I may be a lowlife, but I love my family," he muttered now.

Then, wiping at his eyes, "I guess you could say that about even Hiram Lodge, though."

"Chic--" Alice began again.

"Polly's doing alright. Smart girl," FP said. "Jug -- I'm _making_ him keep his nose clean. Gladys saved Jellybean, whatever problems I have with Gladys. And Chic and Betty... we'll bring them around. I mean, Betty's almost been normal today."

Something seemed to occur to him. He pushed himself upright.

"Betty!" he said. "I should take your temperature again. Okay?"

"Okay?" Betty said, sounding confused.

He lurched into the kitchen to do this. Alice heard the sounds of him handling Betty clumsily, like he was a bear attempting to negotiate with a bee before it could sting him. He only paused when there came the sudden sound of a radio playing in the bathroom, to yell at Jughead to do his homework.

"What homework is that?" Jughead called back, probably to be an annoyance.

"Whatever you have! _I_ don't know!" FP said, frustrated.

Playing at normalcy as desperately as Alice ever did. The FP she'd known in their youth had never done this. The FP she'd known had always said, _a snake's a snake's a snake, and moving it into the Leave it to Beaver house won't change that, Alice._

But he hated parts of this snake life as much as she did. And for a moment, she hated _him_ for never letting on, never admitting that she was right to get out.

When he came back from the kitchen, eyeing the thermometer in his hands like he mistrusted it, she said, “What would you do if I left you?”

By now Betty had finished washing up and gone to her room. So the silence hung between them. 

“Left me?” FP repeated, after a pause. 

Or kicked him out. Or had never married him. If she had all her children safe and unhappy in her antiseptic house. Would that be enough? Her life wasn’t perfect, but it was safe. 

“What would you do if Chic got the money from Sangtapis and I took my share, and then I took my children and left?” she demanded. 

FP worked his jaw. 

“Oh, is that how we’re gonna play it?”

“Yes!” she snapped. “I never wanted to live on the Southside!”

He gestured at the door. 

“Then take Chic and Betty and leave! What do you want me to tell you, Alice?”

That was the answer she thought she’d wanted when she’d asked the question. But now that she had it she hated it. She’d hated it before, too, when they’d been younger and she’d threatened him with leaving. He’d never asked her to stay. She had treated Hal like a foregone conclusion, but then so had FP. 

_Go live with the Cleavers, then, Alice. I’m not gonna beg._

"As long as we're clear that we mean nothing to each other," she told him bitterly, thinking of that.

FP stared at her. His hand clenched so hard around the thermometer that his knuckles were white, and his eyes blinked furiously.

When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous.

"We are not clear," he said.

"You just told me to leave--"

"We. Are. Not. Clear," he hissed. "I won't play your games. I won't beg on my knees to keep you. I won't let you turn the Serpents into nothing more than your cash cows. But I _will_ think of you if you go, Alice."

He dropped the thermometer on the table and turned away, as if overcome. Took a few steps to the kitchen. Stopped.

"And you'll think of me," he added. "Or I hope you will. But maybe it doesn't matter. I can't control you. Wouldn't want to, anyway. Most days I can't control myself. But you can't erase what we've had, and it will always mean something to me."

He grabbed his jacket from the peg by the kitchen and shrugged it on, then was out of the house, clanging the door behind him. Alice sat there in the green light and the silence, heart beating too fast for her chest.

 _Fuck,_ she thought.

Then she was after him, mind racing. She thought he'd be heading for his bike, heading for town, heading for a bar somewhere. But he was just standing with his head bent, hands gripping the porch railing, breathing hard. He'd always been tall enough to loom over her a little, but this didn't matter when she was so worked up. She grabbed his arm and made him turn, ignoring his snarl. She tangled her hands in his collar and forced him to look at her. Her face was wet.

"We are such bad news," she managed, through enraged sobs. "Look at us! Things with us spiral, and we end up with bodies, and with lye--"

She was babbling. He thought she was babbling about this world, about being a Serpent with him right here. She wasn't. She was babbling about how she got a chance to get away and she _still_ ended up knocking on his door, making him do her dirty work. And he did it without blinking an eye.

 _We take care of our own,_ he'd said. Like that could make up for the nightmare they'd always had to live together.

And yet, somehow, her words all led her to the same place.

"I don't want to leave without you."

That. That was it. Both of her lives were stained with blood now, and in both lives she wanted out. She'd sacrifice a lot to get out. But, she thought, as she fingered the soft leather of his collar, she was finally tired of sacrificing him.

When he leaned down and kissed her it was a much softer kiss than she expected. Careful. Gentle as his hand on hers. 

She cupped the back of his neck and, when he broke off, refused to let him go.

"I want you," she said.

Not here. Not in this world. Not with dead bodies involved. But in general.

"Good," he said.

But they didn't go inside just yet, because he became interested in putting his mouth on all the places her skin was mottled by the Christmas lights, on the inside of her wrists and on the corner of her jaw and on her nose. She hit him lightly after that one. Pressing his mouth and his scruff to her skin seemed to do something for him, but it wasn't what she was asking for.

"I'm cold, FP," she snapped. 

He pulled off his jacket and draped it across her shoulders. Then he resumed his ministrations, though his arms goose-pimpled instantly.

"If you don't stop being wholesomely infantile right this second and get me inside so you can fuck me, I am going to shove a firecracker in the tailpipe of your motorcycle, so help me god," Alice said. "I'm pretty sure I did it once. I can do it again."

FP drew back.

"That was you?"

Yes. Apparently it had happened in both universes. But before she could deny it he was hoisting her up onto the rickety porch railing, so that he could arrange her more comfortably in his arms. Alice let herself be maneuvered only because she felt giddy and pampered, ordering him again to get her inside, watching him wrestle with the door and his arms full of Alice, and then swatting him on the head when he nearly banged her foot on the door post. 

When they got to their room, he dropped her on the bed. Alice felt the cheap springs dip and then he was leaning above her, kissing into her neck. She shoved him off and attacked his flannel. He began to laugh as she pulled it off of him.

"Jeez, Alice. You'd think we didn't do this every day."

Yeah, if this Alice had to put up with Canadian mafiosos and evil drug dealers and a mounting pile of dead bodies, then they'd _better_ do this every day. She got the flannel off and applied herself to his ratty grey henley. When she pulled it up, she let her nails rake over the muscles of his stomach. He drew in a breath. 

"How do you want me, honey?"

_How do you want me._

Could she say every way? Could she demand all the options, because she'd been until now starved of them? 

When she reached for his jeans, the sound of his zipper being drawn was extra loud. She helped work them off his hips until he had to get up to take them off fully, and then she got to take in his back, his arms, his legs as he pulled off his boxers. He turned to look at her expectantly, like he wasn't stupidly, amazingly naked. She started laughing. She couldn't help it.

Laughter made Hal sulky. It made just FP hold up a warning finger and say, "That's not fair. Easy for you to make me a joke when you've still got your clothes on."

And then of course he was irritatingly slow about taking them off, taking every opportunity to kiss new exposed parts of her, lavishing attention on her belly, breasts, and thighs. Alice had never considered her thighs all that erotic, but he treated them like they were. It made her throat catch up, her body sing. 

"We've been together long enough that you know what I like," she told him, making it sound like a statement instead of the question it really was. 

"Mmmm-hmmm," said FP, still just tasting her, long and slow and happy with this. He'd dipped a hand inside her underwear now and begun to rub along her folds. She worked her hips against his fingers, the rhythm apparently instinctive for both of them.

"Show me," Alice told him. "Show me what I like."

She got up on her elbows long enough to watch him pull his head up, catch her eyes with his. She couldn't understand why his pupils were blown, why further down his cock was perking up. They hadn't even done anything. He'd only been kissing her. This libido on a man of his age was perverse and inappropriate and delightful.

"Turn over, then, honey," he said.

 _What?_ she thought.

There was some trepidation as he got her underwear off and carefully turned her over, his hands warm on her skin. But when he was tucked in behind her he didn't prod anywhere that would make a pastor cry. She wasn't sure what made doing it like this special, aside from the general naughtiness. She couldn't see him, and that was a definite downside. 

Then she felt him between her parted legs, fully hard now, rubbing into her sex. She ground down into him on instinct. They rocked like that for a bit until she felt such an intense want that she had to stretch a hand behind her to grab at his hair. He hissed a little and sank kisses into her neck. Then she felt him enter her sex with his fingers, stretching her gently. The angle was still strange, but let him get deeper than she expected. When he withdrew his fingers, she took in a breath.

He pushed into her slowly. She clenched her fingers in the sheets, feeling him be deliberate and maddening about it. He didn't get in all the way at first, just pushed in halfway and then out, rubbing her clit with a hand. This was good, so good, but not enough. This was only so much teasing for the both of them.

"Ready?" he said, right when she was about to scream at him to do more.

For what? Ready for what?

Her answer was him pulling out completely, which wasn't what she wanted at _all_ , then using firm hands to guide her to her hands and knees. When he pushed into her again, it was to the hilt. From this angle he could keep rubbing at her clit while he set a faster pace. And while he pressed kisses to her back, apparently still interested in doing that. Alice couldn't focus on it, though. Everything came down to the full feeling between her legs, the rhythm his fingers were setting for her clit. She felt made of nerve endings, made of want, and deliciously catered to for once. 

When she came, it was a full body experience. He was still rocking into her, still kissing her. He took her hair and gently brushed it over one shoulder, like she wasn't shuddering and coming apart. Like she'd care about what a hoyden she must look like.

"I want to see you," she muttered, when she was sated.

"Soon," FP promised.

" _Now_."

He pulled out long enough for her to turn over, and then pushed in from the front. When he came inside her, she had her hands around his neck and was egging him on, liking the needy, shattered look he had. So handsome and all hers.

It did occur to her, once that was done, that they hadn't used a condom. But this Alice had birth control in the night table drawer, so that probably didn't matter. And anyway--

"Fuck it," she said. "We're married."

FP, panting hard, shot her a strange look. When he slipped out of her, he pulled himself down so that his face was between her legs. She grabbed a few pillows to prop herself up so she could watch him. What was he doing?

Putting his mouth to her again. Licking at her again. Even though they'd just--

"That is very dirty," Alice informed him, though she could feel her want once again building.

He paused long enough to give her a patient glance, like he knew what she would say next.

"No, keep going," she said. "I could come again."

-

When they were done and had cleaned up the bed some, they fell into a drowsy near-sleep.

This time she wound her arms around him. He stared at her, a little dazed.

"What?" Alice snapped. "I can't be comforting?"

"Alice, I'm not fighting you," he said mildly, and captured her mouth in a kiss.


	13. Night Without Roles

Before Toni had left with Fangs, she'd pulled Jughead aside, with an apologetic look at Betty and Veronica. It was one thing for Veronica Lodge to suddenly recover her memory. It was another for Betty, a Serpent in this world, to conspire with a Lodge _capo_.

So when Betty was done with the dishes, she knew she needed to talk to Jughead. She went down the hall to the bathroom. There she found Jughead sitting on the edge of the tub, laptop on his knees. He wasn't cleaning or doing homework. He was writing. But Betty's arrival made him snap his laptop shut, cutting off the quietly melancholic tune he was listening to. Betty could feel herself frowning at this, her anxiety mounting.

_I've already read your novel_ , she wanted to point out.

But maybe in this world she hadn't. Or maybe in this world it was a different novel, though Betty wasn't sure the specifics of the novel mattered. Jughead wrote for the same reasons she did: because not writing, not communicating what was happening to them, felt like an unthinkable surrender to life itself. Writing let you capture life and name it, accuse it of injustice where necessary, praise its loveliness where appropriate. So Betty was a diarist and Jughead an aspiring novelist, and they met in the middle with their articles, blatant volleys in a campaign of asserting themselves wherever possible and necessary.

She wanted to share that campaign with him again. But the distance between them in this world was even greater than the distance in her own. When she said, "Hi," all he said was, "Money from the Lodges. And apparently you know Veronica Lodge, huh?"

His fingers scrambled antsily along the top of his laptop. Betty, who hated seeing him like this, had to grip the door posts to the bathroom before she answered.

"I know this doesn't make any sense," she said, voice small. "And I would never choose her over you. But I don't want to choose between you. I know this is crazy, Jug, but she's my friend."

Jughead bit his lip.

"Veronica Lodge."

"Yes."

"Veronica," he repeated, with a bitter edge to his voice, " _Lodge_."

Betty watched his hands dance, his generous mouth twist up. This wasn't the Jughead she liked best, but this was still Jughead, and this Jughead had reason to mistrust her.

"Can we not talk in the bathroom?" she tried. 

It didn't matter where they talked. But she wanted to buy some time, if only the scant few moments it took to follow him down the hall to the room he shared with Chic. This world's Betty, like Betty herself, had never felt like she could tell Jughead about all her darkness. But where Betty had kept silent to preserve the fragile reconciliation between them, her counterpart had thought of bigger things. The diary had recorded a million reasons not to burden Jughead.

Like,

_Even though FP says we can go to their house, Juggie's mother doesn't like it. She won't yell at FP for inviting us over but she does get mad at Juggie. I think I won't go so often. I want to tell him about Dad marrying Penelope Blossom but I guess can tell Juggie at school._

Or,

_Last week Juggie told me Jellybean was in the hospital again. This isn't like the time the doctors made his mom get those x-rays. He thinks they know why Jellybean's sick but they won't say. I don't want to start talking about Chic refusing to take his medications now. It isn't as bad as the thing with Jellybean._

Or,

_Juggie and Jellybean were at Byrdie's when Polly and I went over. We went over because Mom is still mad about Dad adopting the Blossoms. Juggie and Jellybean were there because FP and Gladys are fighting again. So I didn't say anything about the Blossoms and when Polly started to I kicked her. We don't have to live with the Blossoms, but Juggie and Jellybean have to live with their parents._

This Betty -- for all that she'd concocted this clandestine scheme with Chic -- kept quiet about her secrets so that she could be patient, kind, a responsible listener. Again not so different from regular Betty. And it made Betty feel impatient and furious with her counterpart. Why had she abandoned that, in favor of this plan to abandon Jughead?

The boys' room was even more cramped than her own. There was a cheap plastic dresser covered in stickers and sharpie scrawl, curtains hanging half off of their curtain rods, a bunk bed shoved up against one of the windows, a shelf crammed with books, and a single ancient lawn chair. Jughead waved her at this, then began to pace, his fingers on the bridge of his nose. 

Even with his jerky, deliberate movements, she could see the way he set his jaw and how a tremor ran through him. How he blinked furiously, eyes glittering.

"So are you going to go?" he said. "You and Chic? Using the money Veronica Lodge is giving you through her low-budget mafia gigolo?"

"No!" Betty said. 

Maybe. 

No, wait. No. _She_ wasn't this world's Betty, despite the unexpected similarities between them. She wasn't Betty Cooper-Smith-Jones, who dealt with her pain by flinging herself into darkness or clamming up and not burdening anyone. She was a Betty who, only a few hours ago and a few feet away, had resolved that she wasn't going to do either of those things anymore. 

Maybe this was her first test.

She unclenched her fists. She hadn't even realized she was doing that, it came so naturally to her. 

"When did I stop fixing things?" she said. Her tone sounded angry. She realized that this was because she was suddenly angry. Angry about everything this Betty had been through, and everything she'd been through too, and the decisions they both had made. 

Jughead blinked at her. Though he was still visibly upset, after a moment his own rage seemed to recede a bit. Now he brought a hand up to his shoulder and worried his shirt there, wary.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I used to fix things," Betty said. "Before I became dark and scary. I used to try to be the perfect girl, doing everything for everybody. When did I stop?"

Jughead sat down on the bottom bunk, running his hands over his knees. 

“You didn’t.”

Betty blinked at him. No, no this Betty had. She’d even written about it. Said she didn’t care anymore, although she did care — she cared a lot, because nobody who didn’t care about their pain tried to transform it into snarling power instead. 

But Jughead was just shaking his head. The dim light of the room enhanced the hollows under his eyes, the shadow cast by his curl of dark hair. 

“Sure, Betty Cooper has committed herself to the role of bad woman,” he said, “but it’s not like that’s all that different from Betty Cooper committing herself to the role of perfect girl. You're good at both, you know. You used to go to the principal when Malachi said stuff about Toni. Now you challenge him to a rumble. You used to write to the state assembly when the school tried to get me charged for playing with matches. Now, when Sweet Pea gets expelled, you vandalize the faculty trailer.”

He didn't seem angry at all now. His gaze was troubled and even. This world’s Betty had mentioned all that stuff, but hadn’t connected it for her. But Jughead had been watching patiently, an investigator, a novelist searching for a theme, and so he could connect things now. 

“It’s not that different,” he said, his tone quiet, so that she almost had to strain to hear him over the ceiling fan. “Even the stripping and the webcamming — you were turning yourself into a fantasy. For other people. Because you couldn’t fix everything, and any time something went wrong you felt responsible for it—“

“I’m not!” she said hotly. 

“No,” Jughead said. “You’re not. I'm trying to learn that, too, how nobody's responsible for fixing everything.”

Even though she was the one who felt laid bare, he looked very fragile to her. All teeth biting his lip again, all thin cheeks. He looked the way he had when he’d asked her to stay with him, when he’d put a hand tentatively on her skirt. She’d felt like that was such a triumph, because she’d handled everything for him and made him admit he was wrong to exclude her from his life and made him take her back. 

But maybe that wasn’t a triumph. Maybe Jughead had never wanted her to feel responsible for all his problems, had come to her more out of desperation than because he thought Betty Cooper, perfect girl, was meant to fix his world. 

He was certainly wincing at the thought now. 

“I get it," he said. "If anybody has the right to escape, it’s you, okay? Let me never be the one to tell Betty Cooper she owes it to me to stay and suffer, because you don’t. If you want to go with your brother—“

“I never even wanted Chic for a brother!” Betty protested. 

Chic was awful. 

But now Jughead was grinning sadly, 

"So when you go," he said, his smile slight but somehow very bright to her, bright with sadness and black humor, "at least you'll think of me as your favorite brother, right?"

God.

_No_.

"Jughead," Betty said slowly. "Listen to me. I don't want you as a brother either."

Then she was crossing to him. She ran a hand along his neck, watching how his breath sped up and he moved into the gesture, not remotely opposed. She tipped his chin back. The first time she'd ever kissed him, she'd felt disconnected and light, free of all her worries. The last few times she'd kissed him, she'd felt melancholic, desperate, fleeing those worries instead. This time when she kissed him, the moment was clear and absolute. He was Jughead and she was Betty. Nothing more was necessary -- just this leap into how she felt about him, how glad she was to even have him.

When she broke off, his breath stuttered out of him. His hand found her hand, intertwining their fingers.

"Betty, if this is--"

"I'm kissing you because I _like_ you," she said. "Not to hurt myself. I promise."

He looked down. The fragile look had descended on him again. He was a champion at second-guessing, self-doubting. Probably it was hard to live the life Jughead had and _not_ turn in on himself sometimes. He too could act in and act out. Betty held his hand tighter and let out a sad, quiet laugh. They were both monstrous messes. If you put their stories together, how many similarities would you find? Did it even matter? She wanted their stories together. 

She tipped his chin up again.

"Name one reason I shouldn't really like you, Jughead Jones," she said.

"I could name four hundred!" Jughead said, like this was a ridiculous statement.

But now he was running his gaze over her, taking her in, wild loose hair, red-rimmed eyes, looks that she'd always been grateful for but that she was wistfully certain were too unassuming and ordinary to truly be beautiful.

With his free hand, he pushed her hair out of her eyes. Then he hooked that hand on the top bunk, pulled himself up, and pulled her in. He kissed her like he intended to transform from _beloved_ into _lover_ , like he wanted her to understand that whatever the reason for them not to do this, he'd always wanted it. He'd always liked her.

She ended up sitting in his lap, smushed into the bottom bunk, kissing him relentlessly. The last time they'd had sex -- the _first_ time they'd had sex -- it had been a synchronized desire, both of them concentrated on making their reconciliation count. This time she couldn't synchronize anything. She kept breaking off just to look at him, to admire how he let her trace his birthmarks lightly with a fingernail, doodling strange patterns. How he pulled off his beanie so that she could bury her nose in his hair.

"We don't have to--" he began.

But she wanted to. God, she wanted to do all kinds of things. _Weird_ things, even. If she hadn't walked straight into a puddle of blood after their first time, she would have spent the night considering how badly she wanted to just squeeze his arms, his nice arms, which weren't toothpick arms no matter what her mother said. How she'd like them above his head, bound, so that he was laid out for her. How he was very good at undressing her but it was more fun, probably, to undress him and tell him how good he looked, just to watch Jughead Jones get hard and look embarrassed at the same time. 

She was not only not perfect, she wasn't even nice. She wanted to torment him. But in a way he'd like, she was confident, if only he let her do it.

"Do you have condoms?" she asked him.

His eyes went wide, but he pointed at the shelf in the corner.

"Chic does. They're in that jar."

Ugh. Chic. She made a face. Her mood wasn't completely ruined, but it was a near thing. She got up and went to the shelf, where she swiped all of the condoms on principle. No one should be sleeping with Chic. 

Jughead was watching her, mouth quirking.

"Are we relocating? This is Chic's bed we were just making out on."

"Ugh!" she said.

"Alright," Jughead said wryly. "Guess we're relocating."

He grabbed his beanie and stood. She'd pulled up half his shirt during their makeout session and now had to watch it sadly slip down again, covering his stomach.

"You'd think you missed this youthful overeater's physique," he joked, when he caught her looking.

She gave him her coolest glance.

"Am I going to have to miss it for long?"

He swallowed hard. When she beckoned at him, he followed with his beanie still twisting in his hands, red creeping up along his cheeks. She led him to her room, where she tried to lock the door and found that the lock was broken. Jughead ended up shoving a chair under the knob instead, which didn't make much of a lock, but at least would make it a little harder to open the door. 

Then he sat on the bed with the headboard, looking up at her carefully. She drank him in: messy dark hair, long legs, _excellent_ arms, fingers having moved on from his beanie, which he'd left on her night table, to his suspenders. Right. Her Jughead had dated her for weeks before they'd first found themselves in this position. This Jughead had lived with her for a few years now, but they'd dated not at all. Although she had visions of the smooth creature he could be when he wanted to, the one that had stood up to kiss her back a few minutes ago, she shelved that. She straddled him again. This time, instead of reaching for her clothes, he just ran his hands over her arms.

"Juggie?" she said.

"Yeah?" he said softly.

"I want you naked."

She didn't have to ask twice. He stripped off his flannel, his t-shirt. 

She got an idea. She climbed off of him and kneeled next to him, and with her fingertips prodded at him gently until he was up against the headboard. He looked bemused, but didn't fight it.

She tied his hands to the headboard with his flannel, knotting it like she'd used to tie her ice skating laces in another world -- tight, secure, but not uncomfortable. Then she let a hand linger on his chest, where his heartbeat was most loudly insistent.

"Betty?" he said. 

"Yes?" she said, admiring the fan of his lashes and the soft curve of his cheek. 

"Are you sure? You don't have to whip out the cool sex bondage with me. We can just do whatever you want--"

Betty tilted her head and completely failed to hold back her quizzical look.

"You're the one tied up, Jug."

Jughead pressed on, obnoxiously knowing, stupidly secure in how wrong he was, because this was Jughead.

"And I love it," he said reassuringly, like a man not currently at her total mercy. "Sexy B-movie schlock danger? Is she going to sleep with him or eat him? Sign me up. But I'd never _ask_ you to do that--"

Betty put a finger on his lips. 

"I asked you," she said. "Shut up."

He shut up.

So then she got to just explore him. She'd never quite explored him, never had him entirely before her like this. She'd had tentative, sweet kisses with him on her bed, in defiance of her mother's three-feet-apart policy; kisses to comfort him; kisses to comfort her; kisses he'd asked for with a touch of his finger, like he was trying on a new Jughead, a more confident and deft one. She'd gotten his shirt off in desperation, the night he'd become a Serpent; and let him undress her far more ably than she ever could have predicted, the night he'd stopped saying she couldn't be one. This Jughead didn't know it, but they had a history. Every time they'd touched it had had meaning. It had been meant to declare something about themselves, or to help each other, or to prove that they weren't as far apart as they thought.

But what had happened to just _wanting_ him? Didn't she have the right to do that too?

So she spent her time admiring Jughead Jones. For as long as she wanted. Trim waist, surprisingly hard stomach. He let her pull off his pants, and by the time she was done finding the ticklish spots on the backs of his knees, she found him tenting in his boxers, staining the front of the fabric.

"I take it back," Jughead said, in a strained voice. "Sexy? Dangerous? This is just embarrassing for me. I don't know how I'm ever going to look at you again."

"Easily," Betty told him. "Because I'm going to spend a lot of time looking at you, Jughead Jones."

But she took pity on him. She got up long enough to pull her own clothes off, rote about it. She wasn't planning to make it a show, a _fantasy_ , like he'd said. But when she turned around again and saw him looking at her, it was clear she didn't need to do that. His expression was soft and rapt, like someone had handed him a new star and asked him to take care of it.

She climbed on top of him. He was breathing hard now, and harder still when she ran her hands down the place where his stomach muscles dipped in a V. This part of him was peculiarly attractive -- no, all of him was peculiarly attractive -- but this part was vulnerable and inviting all at once. When she finally pulled off his boxers, he squirmed a little. She'd never seen him squirm. Her Jughead had seemed to resolve that he would be a slick, pleasing person in bed, because maybe her Jughead saw how she was the people-pleaser everywhere else. So his movements were always assured and definite, and only his follow-up anxious.

_Maybe it wasn't enjoyable_.

It was written on his face now, the same self-doubt. Like maybe he wasn't doing enough, or maybe the sight of all of him was disappointing her. Betty didn't want him to feel like that. It wasn't at all the case, anyway.

She closed her hand on his cock. The sound he made was surprised and needy.

"I like this," Betty told him, to chase the self-doubt away. Then, without warning, she closed her mouth over the tip.

Just to try it. She'd never done it before. But with Jughead, she felt safe trying. She didn't feel like it made her a harlot, or the perfect girlfriend, or any of that. It made her someone who wanted to taste him to see what he would do. What he did was arch his back and cry out again, and start saying her name very fast.

"Betty-- that's--"

She held up a finger to shut him up. She started off licking him, then slowly wrapping her mouth around it. The taste was bearable, though decidedly not her favorite; and the heaviness on her tongue not unpleasant. The appeal, she decided, was watching and hearing him react. She would always be a bit of a people-pleaser, probably, and so a Jughead who was begging her not to make him come in her mouth turned out to be an odd kind of high.

One that had her squirming herself, further below. She hadn't removed her underwear yet, but she was ruining it. A warm urgency was starting to creep around her thoughts. She pulled off of him, still making a face at the taste, and reached for the condoms.

"Betty," Jughead said, sounding ragged. "Give me a second, okay? Or else I'm going to..."

She regarded him thoughtfully. She wasn't sure she didn't want him to. 

"Come up here and kiss me," he begged. "Okay? Just kiss me."

"After _that_?" Betty said.

Jughead swallowed hard.

"I _am_ a weirdo," he pointed out.

She scooted up so she could kiss him. Weird he definitely was, but maybe so was she. And there was something satisfying in closing her arms around his neck and bruising his lips, having him nip back at her lips. 

After a few minutes of this, Jughead finally said, "Okay. I think -- I think I can hold out. If you still want to--"

She wanted to. She kissed him again, once, and then leaned over to put the condom on. Then she slid her underwear off, liking the awkward little moan Jughead gave at the sight.

"You're not even looking at me head-on," she said, because she was turned half on her side, breasts out, belly at perhaps its most unflattering angle.

"Betty Cooper, if I were looking at you head-on, all this would be over really fast," Jughead said. 

But despite these protests, he managed to hold on when she climbed on top of him and began to rub herself on his length. Now he was quietly rapt, his breath escaping him in measured gasps, his chest rising and falling fast. Betty became annoyed at her limitations, because she wanted to be exuberantly wild with that chest, to see what noises he made when she closed her mouth on his nipples. But she also wanted him, wanted the full, achey pleasure of their first time repeated. So she had to focus on making sure she was ready, not that this was much of a trial. The first time, Jug had been the one to open her up, with his tongue, his fingers. This time, she wanted to explore herself. She wanted to understand why one finger, then two, then three could produce such an agonizing buildup, the gradual stretch both necessary and pleasurable. 

Looking at him, touching herself, rubbing on him -- all of it meant that that urgency in her deepened. She felt wound up and eager. Since her hands came away wet, and he _had_ said he was weird, she put a finger to his mouth and he opened it immediately, wanting to taste her. That was like a shock to her brain. After that, she didn't want to hold out anymore.

It took a few tries to get him inside. And moving herself on and off of him was more of a challenge than she thought. She felt ungainly and clumsy, not really sexy at all despite the want between her legs. But there were tears on Jughead's face and he was biting his lip, his expression still full of that odd desire and awe.

"Let me help," he begged. "Please, Betts. _Please_. Otherwise I'll lose it."

So she climbed off long enough to untie him. He massaged his wrists for a moment, but didn't move out of position except to push himself up a little, so that she could climb back on him more easily. His hands closed on her hips, not hard, but guiding. He pressed his head to her chest and kissed her collarbone, still worshipful.

"Okay," he said shakily. "Okay. Let's do this. You come first, alright?"

He didn't need to say that. Jughead, she was sure, would never have it any other way between them. But she was too keyed up now to speak, so she only nodded. Then he helped her sink onto him slowly.

It was better than it had been their first time.

-

They slept after, on the other bed. In the dream-filled quiet, Jughead only seemed to need to hold her to drift off.

"It was good," she whispered to him, just in case he second-guessed himself.

His arms tightened around her. He was maybe not that far asleep yet. Betty felt herself dropping off after him, every part of her sated and in need of rest.

Then the door banged open.

"Betty!" Chic's voice came. "You have to get up! We have to lea-- oh, what the fuck? Seriously?"

He turned on his heel and banged out, but she and Jughead were now wide awake, clutching at each other and staring after him. After sharing a look, they got up and reached for their clothes, but through the open door she could see Chic now crashing into their parents' room

"Oh, what the _fuck_?" he wailed again. "You know what? Fine! Whatever! Let's just go, okay, we have to go! We have to go now!"

Alice ran out, dressed in what looked like a flannel shirt of FP's.

"What did you do?" she demanded. "Did you kill him? Did you get the money?"

"No time!" Chic snapped. "We have to go!"

Betty shot another look at Jughead, who was pulling on his pants. She did the same, then pulled on a shirt, and when they were more or less dressed they joined the others in the hallway. FP, only in his boxers, looked especially incensed.

"Now, boy, what the hell is this about--"

Betty wanted to point out that it was about how Chic was clearly the family lunatic in a family of people who were already none-too-sane, but then there was a crash, like someone had forced their way through the front door.

Toni and Fangs appeared at the end of the hall. Betty stared at them. They were walking very stiffly, with their hands up. Behind them, there was a man in a trenchcoat and fedora. Not Archie. Archie had worn his Converses with his trenchcoat. This man at least had the good sense to try for full costume.

"Hi, guys," Toni said, through clenched teeth.

"Hey," Fangs said. "Chic? Fuck you, Chic."

"What's going on?" Alice asked, voice high and shaky.

"I can answer that question," said the man in the fedora. "You can call me Arthur Adams. Chic here was working with me."

Betty whirled on Chic. Her anger was total, jamming up her airways and kicking her blood into high gear.

"How many secret plots do you have, Chic?" she demanded.

Chic had the gall to look like he was the wronged one.

"I didn't know he was going to turn on me!" he said. "I thought he was real FBI! He told me so!"

Betty almost lunged for him.

"Chic," she hissed, " _People aren't from the FBI just because they tell you so!_ "


	14. Disasters at Dinner

Much as Veronica wanted to press for details about her supposed plan, there wasn’t time. Her parents were hosting a dinner tonight. In attendance were their legal counsel, local law enforcement, and naturally the fawning editors of the _Blossom Bugle_ , who peddled in what Hal Blossom née Cooper (née Blossom?) proudly called “news with a strong side helping of family values.”

“Did you, or did you not, marry your cousin’s ex wife?” Veronica muttered under her breath. 

Cheryl shot her an intrigued look. Maybe casually breaking social taboos just got Cheryl going. 

Either way, soon an army of personal assistants and tailors descended on Veronica’s suite, pulling aside an aggrieved Sweet Pea to be fitted for dinner, banishing Archie to a place where he could find new clothes to continue to be aggressively handsome in, politely advising the Blossoms to return to the library, and falling with heaps of compliments on Veronica. 

Her father had always told her she was a princess. Now she felt completely like a princess, and not in a good way. She was subtly chastised for her skin (“Like you were running around a garbage dump!”) and praised for losing four pounds she probably hadn’t needed to lose. She was gently rebuffed when she reached for a fitted sheath, and told her father preferred a virginal velvet dress with a flared skirt, simple and elegant on top, voluminous on the bottom. 

“The Audrey Hepburn of his current re-election campaign,” hummed one of the assistants, the one doing her nails. 

“And in five or six years, maybe, his presidential campaign,” said the assistant working on her hair. 

Veronica’s heart threatened to escape from her chest. His _What?_

“If this dinner goes well,” said the assistant surveying her treasure trove of shoes with a critical eye. “Then there’s the one in Washington to think about. And then maybe someday England. India. The Philippines. Moscow.”

“But first the dinner with the Vice President,” noted the nail assistant, frowning. “I hope you have your talking points about waiting ‘til marriage.”

The more resplendent they made her, the fouler her mood became. But tantrums didn’t appear to work on the assistants, who regarded her like she was just a Pekingese having a fit. So it was only after she was exfoliated, trimmed, wet, blow-dried, subtly contoured, wrapped in velvet, and adorned in pearls that she made her escape. 

She ran into Sweet Pea in the halls, also escaping. He had also been buffed and reworked within an inch of his life. His hair was side-parted and gleaming. His jacket was made of a black fabric so magnificent that its very blackness seemed to taunt all other colors for existing. Someone had put a turtleneck on him to hide his neck tattoo, and because he was relatively tall and attractive, he managed not to look like a hipster, math teacher, or tech bro.

"You," he said, pointing a finger at her. "I want to talk to you. I'm ready to blow this place up."

Veronica could relate, but she still rolled her eyes, because honestly? The more she thought about the pipe bomb, the more the whole plan seemed both stupid and like something the Serpents would never go through with, or at least never manage to pull off properly. The Family, of course, could do it beautifully. The Family had done worse. But the Serpents were a motley arrangement of delinquents with sisters and sons and nephews to look out for, who appeared to concoct half-baked plans only to shamefacedly admit, after the whole thing escalated, "Alright. We could have done that better."

She'd been frustrated with the Joneses for not taking her father's deal. Now she was frustrated with them for not doing the smart thing: pretending to take it, letting him pay the back-rent, and then double-crossing him and pinning the double-cross on a convenient mutual enemy. That was what a Lodge would do. 

"This is not the time for your pipe bomb," she told Sweet Pea now. "My father has ever-grander schemes for consolidating his power, and we have to find out what those are!"

Not to mention whatever this Veronica's plan was.

"And," she added, "blowing up daddy's hallways will only make him look like a martyr, and he _loves_ to look like a martyr--"

All Lodges did.

"--and so the whole scheme will backfire on you. You're not here to keep an eye on me, Sweet Pea. You're here because you need me. Veronica Lodge is your in to the horrible dealings of this world's Vito Corleone, and you should be grateful that I'm getting you a seat at the table!" 

Having declared all this, she crossed her arms and surveyed him, expecting him to look chastised. Mostly he looked annoyed.

"They made me take off my clothes, so I had to shove my bomb in a stupid fancy vase. I only got it back because when I was dressed again your dad started monologuing about how he's the only man for you, so everybody's back was turned and I could sneak it under my shirt again. This was _after_ forty minutes of being fitted for this suit. Which, by the way, was really forty minutes of your dad standing weirdly close to me, talking about loyalty and manhood and how I can never give you the strength and power you deserve."

"That...sounds like my dad," she admitted. 

"I don't appreciate people creeping on me and talking about how appealing their own daughters are while I'm standing around in my boxers!" Sweet Pea said. 

"It's not ideal," Veronica allowed, "but your nightmare is nothing compared to mine. Over the past twenty-four hours, I've come to understand myself as a _monster_ , Sweet Pea." She held her hands up to punctuate the point. "A creature made of nothing more than money and privilege. The Dolores del Rio of displacing the poor!"

Sweet Pea rolled his eyes.

"I promise," he said. "Getting groped by Daddy Lodge is way worse than being rich and selfish. He tried to make me wrestle him. He has a whole room set up so he can wrestle people. He said 'real men wrestle,' and I was like, 'I don't need to be face to armpit with another guy to feel like a real man.'"

Veronica wanted to feel bad for him and all, but now _rich and selfish_ was reverberating through her head. It was one thing to say it herself. It was another thing to hear him say it so bluntly. 

"Well," she said. "I'm terribly sorry you have to trail the selfish rich bitch on a long-term spy assignment for your gang--"

"I'm not," Sweet Pea said. "If I can get on the Lodge payroll _and_ help my crew? Nice. Money for my sister and an in for the Serpents."

"Nice to know you can be bought," Veronica said icily.

Sweet Pea leaned on one of the hallway's many gilded, marble-topped end tables and shoved his hands in his pockets. From this angle he wasn't so astonishingly tall and his face wasn't so far away, so the full force of his unimpressed glower came through.

"Veronica, money isn't some insubstantial charming thing that exists so _you_ can have something to angst about," he said slowly. "Money is what keeps people in their homes. Money is what puts food on the table. Money is what gets you a decent education. It's not about being bought. It's about basic survival."

"Jughead doesn't put money before principles!" Veronica said, suddenly glad Jughead had refused her father's offer.

"Jughead," Sweet Pea said slowly, "who you don't even know that well, so I don't know why you're bringing him up, usually approaches life like he's in a story. Just like you do. But if you stop pretending you're the protagonist and everything you do has all this meaning, you can start trying to think of ways to actually help people, so that even if you're rich, you're not necessarily a selfish bitch. Okay, halfpint?"

Veronica reeled back. She felt like arguing -- she was Veronica Lodge, she was brutally honest, she wasn't some sort of faker who built up a narrative around herself -- only...

Only she was always aware of what it meant to be Veronica Lodge. She was fairly obsessed with it. Veronica was fascinated with herself, _the_ self, and it was this that her parents had always been able to manipulate and charm, to encourage her to elevate above all others, because she already did this to herself.

So she just settled for saying, a little helplessly, "'Halfpint'? I thought I was 'princess.'"

"On the Southside you're a princess," Sweet Pea told her, a grin cracking the corners of his mouth. "Here everybody's fancy, so you're just the shortest. Now come on. Let's go to dinner before your dad sets mafia henchmen on us."

He held out his arm. Veronica stared at it. It was solid and reassuring. It would be easy to fantasize about it being the only certain thing in her universe, or something like that.

She patted it kindly.

"I can walk myself in," she said, to Sweet Pea's raised eyebrows. 

Unfortunately, Archie had other plans. He appeared at the end of the hall, looking like he'd been running in his new red suit. Running added an even more charismatic flush to all his features. He was like a long red church candle, topped off by the neatly-coiffed flame of his hair.

"Veronica!" he said. "You didn't come meet us in the library!"

Well, she didn't know where it was, so.

Archie descended on them with an accusatory finger out.

"And this guy ran right out of the wrestling room!"

"This suit is like the most expensive thing I've ever worn," Sweet Pea said flatly. "I'm not gonna get it sweaty. Have some appreciation for craftsmanship."

"Hey, I have appreciation for you not harassing Veronica," Archie said, despite there being absolutely no evidence that Sweet Pea was doing this.

"Okay," Veronica began, "we can leave the chauvinism back in the wrestling room, Archiekins--"

"I'm escorting you to dinner," Archie said, holding out his arm. "Your dad said so!"

Veronica stared at the arm. Sweet Pea tilted his head in an exaggerated way, so that he too was staring at the arm.

"My father," Veronica said frostily, "does not get to decide who escorts me anywhere. Not without my consent."

Archie looked honestly hurt, and for a second Veronica felt bad, thinking he was hurt over her.

"That's really unfair, Ronnie," he said. "Really unfair. Your father's an amazing human being."

Veronica's mouth dropped open.

 _Oh my god_ , she realized. _We brainwashed him._

-

Archie's aggressive, demonstrative affection for her father was only one of the many elements that made dinner disastrous.

There were the Blossoms, of course. Hal and Penelope happily competed with Archie for the privilege of praising Hiram most often and most creatively.

"You're such a Don Juan, Hiram," Penelope simpered. "Hermione, if I didn't have my Harold, I would be jealous."

Cheryl gagged into her soup, until Penelope did something to her under the table that made her muffle a shriek. Hal ignored this in favor saying, "What I like is your business acumen. And your charity! You've really put the _Bugle_ on the map. It's just great how the town has a man committed to traditional family values."

"Values are my byword," Hiram noted, admiring himself for a second in the back of his spoon, before putting it down and solemnly requesting paella before soup. Archie jumped up to get a servant for him. Hiram thanked him, but otherwise didn't seem bothered that Archie was acting as his gofer.

"And we both have dear little girls," Hal mused then.

Hermione took a drink.

"I think Veronica and Cheryl are dear in very different ways," she said after a moment, with that strange way she had of always becoming overinvested in Veronica's schoolfriends. Veronica had once assumed it was protectiveness, but now it made her wrinkle her nose.

"No, of course, Cheryl's awful," Penelope said hastily. 

Next to all this, a silent Sheriff Keller was almost a relief. He ate his soup dutifully, dutifully picked up his own napkin when he dropped it, and even squinted at Penelope when she pinched or kicked or did whatever she did to Cheryl, forcing Penelope to stop. Veronica remembered her mother saying the Sheriff made a good yes-man. Veronica also remembered her parents conspiring to betray him and Mayor McCoy. She wished he wasn't at the table today.

She also wished Mayor McCoy wasn't. Although Sierra McCoy didn't seem to be the Mayor here, because Hermione was the Mayor. Sierra was simply a strained, unhappy woman saddled with attending to the Mayor, a Mayor who now said, "How is your Josie enjoying boarding school?"

The not-Mayor started.

"What--oh, she loves it."

"I find it funny that any time Hiram and Veronica come into town, Josie's away," said Hermione. "It's almost like you don't want her mixing with my Veronica. She's never even at your office."

"Could you pass me the salt, please?" Veronica asked desperately, trying to forestall whatever strange tumult her mother wanted to cause. But Sierra didn't hear. The Sheriff passed it to her instead.

"Well, I don't involve my child in my business, Hermione," Sierra was saying, sounding annoyed now.

"I'm the reason you even have a business, so I would curb the snippiness, Sierra," Hermione said, tone bland enough to make the words extra-threatening.

Sierra looked away, cowed, at an empty chair next to her that in Veronica's world might have contained Fred Andrews. 

Veronica found herself shuddering. She didn't want any of these people involved with her parents. Not the McCoys, not Sheriff Keller, not even the Blossoms. And most definitely not Archie, who returned with servants on his heels, all of them bearing paella. 

Veronica cleared her throat as he sat down again.

"Archiekins?" she said. "I have an idea. Why don't you tell the Sheriff and the M-- Mrs. McCoy, I mean -- how you came to be with us?" 

Her father dropped his fork. Archie dove to pick it up.

Hermione said, sharply, "Veronica, I don't think that's appropriate--"

"No, it's fine," Archie said, from under the table. "Hiram helped my dad with our old construction company, but then my dad-- he--"

Hiram took advantage of his faltering.

"Veronica, let's not torture the poor boy," he said severely. "And he should just get up now. Someone else can bring me a fork." He lifted up a corner of the tablecloth, the better to shoot Archie an irritated look.

But when Archie came back out again, Sweet Pea said, casually, "Word on the Southside is that your dad was a really hardworking guy, Andrews."

Veronica was grateful and didn't quite know why. This could have been a cruel thing to hammer home, given what had happened to Fred. It certainly made Archie go white. But it also made Archie talk.

"It's Lodge, actually. After he passed and my mom passed, the Lodges adopted me. That's why Ronnie and I are like brother and sister--"

"You guys have a pretty interesting definition of brother and sister," Cheryl muttered.

"Cheryl!" Penelope shrieked.

Hal took over the conversation, looking worried.

"So, Hiram. How is it going buying up the land around Fox Forest for your project?"

Hiram was still watching Penelope as she resumed doing something to Cheryl under the table, something Cheryl squealed at. But he stopped this long enough to say, "There are some holdouts. But we'll bring them around."

For some reason, Hal gave Veronica a very significant look. Veronica frowned. But now Sweet Pea turned a look on her like she was slow. With his elbow, he knocked over the salt. Then, swiftly, he wrote _FP and Alice_ in the ensuing mess with a finger, before rubbing it out.

Right. They lived in Fox Forest. And they would never sell out to Hiram Lodge. Not in their world. Not in this one.

And in a flash, she knew her plan. She didn't need Hal Cooper-Blossom-whatever to tell it to her. She _knew_ it. She'd set her _capo_ , Archie, on this world's Betty. Not to track the Serpents, but to do something more insidious. To find a way to get the Joneses to come to heel, so the Lodges could emerge triumphant. 

Exactly what she'd been working towards in her world. 

She felt sick. She didn't want to be here anymore. Taking a page out of Sweet Pea's book, she leaned forward, knocked her elbow into her soup, and spilled it all over the both of them.

It wasn't a tantrum, but it did the trick. Sweet Pea pushed himself back from the table, cursing, and Veronica said to others, "Oh no, look at that. I guess we should go get changed. Come on, Sweet Pea."

It came out without much feeling, but she didn't care. She just needed to get out, to breathe. She pulled Sweet Pea out of the dining room by his arm, ignoring her parents' stares and how he was still cursing, and into another one of those endless marble hallways. She picked a door at random. It revealed a sleek, modern lounge that backed onto one of the manor's many terraces. Veronica pulled him out into the cold night, desperate for air.

"I think I've always been a horrible person," she admitted, once they were out there. Lodgeville was spread out before her, all the evidence arrayed there. She could see the pall of smog over the Southside, emanating from the garbage plant.

Sweet Pea didn't say no. He just sighed and wiped at her face with his jacket sleeves. She hadn't even realized she was crying.

"Use your pocket square!" Veronica said, stamping her foot. She felt like she had to say it, though the moment was dire, because decency called for it. "That's what it's for! If you use your sleeves, you'll just ruin your jacket!"

"You already ruined my jacket. You spilled soup on me," Sweet Pea pointed out. "Plus I have to give the jacket back because it's too big to lift, but the pocket square I can smuggle out of here and sell."

That was resourceful, Veronica supposed. 

Then she had a wholly new thought, one that really ought to have occurred to her before.

"What's your name?" she demanded.

It had been in his school records when she'd been setting up her welcoming committee. But the committee hadn't been for the Southsiders, not really. It had been mostly to serve her parents' aims. So although she was sure she'd seen his name, she'd counted it beneath her notice. Now that felt unforgivable.

Sweet Pea just snorted, though.

"Put your _capo_ on it," he suggested. 

That sent her right back to her foul mood. She began to pace, heels clacking on the terrace tile, hands out before her and grasping at nothing, at her frustration. Sweet Pea watched her warily.

"Archie!" she said. "My _capo_ 's Archie. I can't believe anyone would make him a _capo_! I mean, who even are his soldiers?"

"Who would he bring to a rumble?" Sweet Pea offered.

Oh god. Oh no. Of course. Archie had soldiers a-plenty. She probably hadn't even deputized Archie out of affection, but because Archie so easily commanded the Bulldogs of the world. Reggie and Moose were probably his underlings. Veronica had to be his underboss, and that meant the chief boss was--

"That sure was a lot of spilling at the table," came her mother's cool voice.

Hermione leaned against the glass door to the terrace, her sequined pantsuit making her look like some terrible, star-bedecked goddess of the night sky. Hiram was just behind her, no longer disaffected and amused, but intent. He was looking straight at his daughter.

"Veronica," he said, voice very mellow. "One fascinating thing I learned just before dinner. Your mother tells me Papa Poutine has passed."

Veronica took a step back. She felt Sweet Pea's hand on her lower back, like he thought she needed steadying, but she couldn't look at him because she couldn't make herself look away from her parents.

"He was a good man," Hiram said noncommittally. "But he had his minor flaws, as we all do. Gambler; drinker; abusive to women and children; indulgent with the, uh, I believe the mind-altering psychotropics; very violent; altogether a terrible temper; could have been better with his finances; unkind to dogs, I heard; insulting to Monsignor--"

"You killed him," Veronica said.

Hiram had done it in her world. Of that she was absolutely sure.

But of course he had the nerve to look offended.

"Well, that's what's interesting," her father said. "Someone else got to him. But they worked very hard to make it look like _I_..."

Again, that expression of terrible offense. 

But Hermione picked up where Hiram left off. "Whoever did it was very, very clever, Veronica. Because someone made sure eighty-six-thousand dollars were paid out of my account to his contract killer. So whoever did this knew my finances the way _only_ a Lodge might."

Now Sweet Pea stepped in front of her. Veronica let him.

"What's _very_ funny," Hermione continued, "is that Arturo tells me the perpetrator was a Southside Serpent, like your little friend. One named Chic Cooper? Do you know him?"

"Arturo?" Veronica said, instead of answering. Dread was knotting up her stomach, so her voice came out very, very high.

Hermione smiled. 

"You're not the only one with _capos_ , Veronica."

Her mother shoved the glass terrace door so hard it slid completely open. From the corner of her eye, though she hadn't noticed him at all before, Veronica saw Andre barrel through, heading straight for her and Sweet Pea.


	15. To the Farm-Farm

Several things, Veronica would later realize, saved her in the scuffle that followed.

First, the fact that Sweet Pea was ingenious in a way Andre wasn't. Andre was definitely the better fighter when it came to knowledge of the martial arts. But Sweet Pea had already decided he was willing to destroy anything he couldn't smuggle out of the house, so his own jacket was a noose, the glass sliding door a nice place to shove Andre's head, and the painting of Veronica inside the lounge useful for breaking off a corner of the frame and jabbing it at Andre to hold him back.

Veronica tripped in their wake, dodging her father. There could be no escaping through the terrace, which was several stories above the driveway. They had to go through the house, even if it meant she had to shove her own mother out of the way several times to get through.

That was the second thing that probably helped. How _completely_ done with her parents she was. 

She knew, of course, that they wouldn't hurt her. She knew that. They would only see her banished to a boarding school, possibly one on St. Helena, just to make a point. But they loved her, so no. She would not be hurt by them, only dominated utterly.

It was the rest of the world that would be hurt. Sweet Pea would be. Maybe Archie would be, for failing to keep her in line, or because he would be presumed to be in league with her when he wasn't. So after she ducked and wound away from her mother, when he came in and also tried to grab her, she had no qualms about kneeing him in the groin and giving him the Sweet Pea treatment. Which was to say, taking a fireplace poker and breaking it across his kneecap.

Then she grabbed Sweet Pea and ran, down a long hall, and that was where their third salvation appeared.

Not-Mayor Sierra McCoy was standing in the hallway, leaning on an end table just as Sweet Pea had been earlier, idly examining something on her phone.

When Veronica and Sweet Pea ran by, she said, in that crisp way she had that always sounded vaguely irked, "Veronica. Heading to the garage?"

Veronica had no idea where the garage was. She and Sweet Pea kept running, past several doors, only for Sierra to hiss, "No! The Garage!" 

Veronica stopped and turned. Sierra McCoy gestured furiously at a door they'd passed to her right. 

"Sweet Pea!" Veronica said. "Over here!" 

Then, with a look over her shoulder to make sure Sweet Pea was following, she ran to the door and opened it. It was an elevator. By the time Sweet Pea doubled back and joined her in it, they'd punched the button for the garage level and Veronica heard her mother shrieking, "Sierra! Why did you let them in there?"

"Who?" Not-Mayor McCoy said innocently. "Veronica? Why, Hermione, I thought I was supposed to _defer_ to your sixteen-year-old daughter's judgment."

They emerged a few minutes later in the garage level. Veronica and Sweet Pea raced from Ferrari to Bugatti to Lamborghini, trying doors and searching desperately for keys. Sweet Pea kept hitting the steering wheels for some reason.

"How is that going to help?" Veronica snapped.

"If we had Coop here, she could hot wire these pieces of junk!" he snapped back, like this made his sudden bursts of violence sensible.

Just when she was about to give up hope, a bored, toneless voice cut through.

"Here I am, losers. In case you want a ride."

Cheryl Blossom wheeled up, her red convertible sparkling. She pulled her glasses down on her nose and eyeballed Sweet Pea as he got in the back, then did the same to Veronica, climbing into the front. It was unclear if Cheryl was admiring them or judging them, but Veronica would take the escape either way.

"You have to get us out of here!" she told Cheryl breathlessly.

"I know."

"Fast! My father's probably already had the front gates locked!"

"I _know_ , Veronica," Cheryl said again, like Veronica was inconveniencing her.

Then Cheryl floored it. They tore out of the garage, but rather than go through the front gates Cheryl took them through several innocent hedges. Veronica looked over her shoulder at the house and saw people running out, heard shouts from the terraces. Then she turned back to Cheryl, who said was driving in the dark with her shades on like this wasn't a very bad idea. 

She said, casually, "You know, Veronica, I have no idea why we're trusting you. But I supposed having a Lodge on our side may make a difference."

"Our side?" Veronica said. "Take your sunglasses off!"

"No," Cheryl said. 

Aesthetics above all with Cheryl. 

Her too-bright headlights now illuminated a forest at the edge of the property. Cheryl swerved onto a narrow road, almost grazing a tree. The force of her swerve dislodged a few maple leaves somehow. These rained down on Sweet Pea's head.

"Let me tell you the tale of this town, Veronica," Cheryl said coolly, as her headlights assaulted trees on all sides. Because she was Cheryl, she took a hand off the wheel to gesture with it as she launched into a snappy monologue that permitted her center stage.

"The first family to destroy this place," Cheryl said, motioning to herself, "were none other than the titian-haired tartars known as the Blossoms, i.e. _us_. With nothing more than grit, scores of money, a hearty appetite for bloodshed, and some casual blackmail of the the colonial authorities, we ensured that wickedness took over when we did!"

She smiled, her mouth wide and red. Veronica stared at it. The smile was wildly out of place, like a severed finger in a bouquet of flowers.

"Are you proud of that?" she asked Cheryl, aghast. "Cheryl!"

"Of course I'm proud," Cheryl said, unrepentant. "But not of _that_. I'm proud, Veronica, because despite all that, I'm on the right side of history. I've woken up and smelled the rotting blood maple. And now I'm determined to stop the family that repaid us by supplanting us, by buying out our old maple forest to build their tacky Celebrity Bachelor mansion, and by being even more wicked and greedy than we were."

Again that sunny smile.

Oh. 

"My family," Veronica breathed out. "Me."

"You, Patty Hearst!" Cheryl said brightly, as the car pulled out of the forest and onto a highway. She turned in the direction of the town below, at a speed that was almost certainly illegal. "And now the liberation front has arrived!"

"Cheryl," Sweet Pea spoke up from the back now. "That's fucked up. Those people did some messed up things to her."

"The reference is apt and it stands," Cheryl told him snippily. "And you're missing the point! My family wanted maple. Maple, maple, maple -- my mother and Harold's favorite topic of conversation. But Veronica's family has devised bigger and better ways to leave others suffering for their profit. Everyone's evil, but they're evil on a scale so grand that even a Blossom balks."

"....your parents didn't seem like they were balking, Cheryl," Sweet Pea said, after a few seconds.

"They aren't the only Blossoms, String Bean!" Cheryl hissed. "As you well know!"

"Wait," Veronica said. "Oh my god. Oh my god. Do you two _know_ each other?"

Sweet Pea and Cheryl went suspiciously silent. Cheryl, however, looked satisfied, which told Veronica that she'd very much been enjoying keeping information from Veronica this whole time.

"Sweet Pea," Veronica said slowly, turning around and digging her nails into the vinyl seat that separated them. " _How_ do you two know each other?"

Sweet Pea's eyes held not a single hint of penance.

"There was a mixup the first time we tried to get a Blossom to hold for ransom. We got the wrong one. I told you we had two too many hostages."

"I thought you meant Jason!" Veronica said, shocked.

"Nah," Sweet Pea said, after a minute. "I liked holding Jason. Jason's alright."

-

He was not only alright, but hale and healthy, smoking something pungent right outside the Jones house.

Veronica had seen his picture. But in this world he looked nothing like his picture. This world's Jason Blossom had scraggly red hair down to his shoulders, facial hair that was all effort and no payoff, a buckskin vest, and a white athletic headband. He was leaning on a van painted with flowers. He was talking to Toni Topaz.

"--honestly, never guessed texting my ex could ever come in so handy--" Toni was saying, when a shrieking Cheryl launched herself at them both.

"Jay-Jay!"

"Came as soon as you called, Ryl-Ryl!"

"Oh, Jay-Jay!"

"Ryl-Ryl!

Toni pushed herself off of the van with one arm, and made the kind of face Veronica had hitherto only ever associated with toothy, frantic-looking emojis.

"You're alive," she told Sweet Pea. "Nice. According to Jason, the Farm is collecting all our family members and some of our friends, which I think is supposed to comfort us and not be a _Ticket to Heaven_ kind of thing."

"They don't know all my family members," Sweet Pea said. "They don't know _me_. Wait, the _Farm_ -Farm?"

"What is the farm-farm?" Veronica demanded, hating to be out of the loop. "Why are they getting your families? Why's Jason here?"

Sweet Pea and Toni shared a look that indicated each was suggesting the other take custody of the explanation. While this happened, Alice Cooper came storming out of the house, FP on her heels. He was in his boxers for some reason. She was in a flannel. 

"Hey!" Alice snapped at Jason. "Arlo Guthrie! What are you going to do about that fake FBI agent? Or does your assistance end with giving him a concussion?"

"It's fine," FP insisted. "Fangs and Jug are trussing him up like a turkey now. Think we're gonna shove him in the septic tank for the Farm to find. The water level's low enough that he should be trapped, but not dead."

Alice whirled on him.

"And then what?" she snapped.

"Mother," Jason began.

A look of horror and rage descended on Alice's face.

"Also cousin by ex-marriage," Jason amended, like he thought his error was in not acknowledging just how intimately he and Alice were connected in multiple ways. "Never fear. He will be taken to the forest at midnight."

Alice stuck a finger in his face.

"What kind of sick, occultish, _nightmare_ blood sacrifices have you gotten _my daughter_ involved in--"

Toni cast a worried look at her and leaned in to talk to Sweet Pea and Veronica.

"Okay, they've had this fight like four times and I don't want to see it again, so you know what? Let's just go inside and see if the other fight's over."

"There's another fight inside?" Sweet Pea said.

There was indeed another fight inside.

This one was between Betty and Chic. Their sister, Polly, sat watching them on the couch, decidedly less pregnant than the last time Veronica had seen her. She still had that dewy glow, though, because she was Polly Cooper, the kind of girl who would have very happily made the tallest, blondest, and loveliest Bolshevik at the October Revolution of 1917. She gave Sweet Pea a little wave. Sweet Pea took one look at her fighting siblings, shouting at the top of their lungs, and excused himself to the sun porch, where Jughead and Fangs did seem to be tying somebody up.

In the meantime, Betty was saying, her voice low but scathing, "You trusted that _clearly fake_ FBI agent!"

"It's not my fault!" Chic said, like she was being unreasonable. "He wasn't like your fake FBI agent! Mine had a level gaze! And normal shoes! And a soothing voice that never departed from a single register!"

"So you fed him information about us _and_ the Lodges just to play both sides?" Betty asked, still scathing, now with a dash of incredulous.

"God, don't make it sound so manipulative," said Chic. "We also went to the park and hung out in the carport and stuff. We talked about music."

Betty Cooper lost it. Veronica had seen her lose it before, of course, and it had been a mental break requiring at least a good friend, heaps of chamomile, and the finest therapy money could buy. It had involved black lingerie and boiling someone. Compared to that, Betty clenching her hands, unclenching them, and then launching into a diatribe should have been nothing. But Betty's expressions and fierce gestures made it much more than nothing.

"You sold us out to a Lodge stooge! Because you were _dumb_! And then when he was about to shoot Jughead in the head, you tried to get me and mom to sneak out with you, and _abandon_ \--"

"I thought you would both say yes!" Chic hissed, like this was a defense.

"I would _not_ leave Jughead and my friends!" Betty shouted.

"And I wouldn't leave FP," came the voice of their mother. Veronica whirled around. Alice was now leaning on the door frame, watching the fight like it didn't especially bother her.

"Jeez, then," Chic said, throwing up his hands and taking on the look of a martyr. "I stand corrected! Anyway, my core idea, to run away to the Farm, was solid."

Here Polly piped up.

"Running away to the Farm is the best thing I ever did."

-

Veronica wasn't entirely sure _she_ wanted to run away to the Farm. Regrettably, it seemed like if she stayed, she would be left with her parents. And the others couldn't stay because her parents had ordered the Cooper-Smith-Joneses and any Serpents caught up with them killed.

All of them. A gruesome, gangland-style killing in Fox Forest. It didn't quite hit Veronica at first, and then when it did, she had such a hard time processing it that she barely noticed Betty firmly taking her by the elbow and guiding her to a chair in the dining alcove. 

She still didn't really want to think of this world as the real one. She liked its residents, wanted no harm to come to them, but if she thought of them as her priorities then she was giving up her own world. No, this world had to be the ruined one, the one she was meant to prevent. The one where her mother sent her _capo_ out to kill a whole family, leave them smeared in their own house, maybe right against that wall there, the ugly notched wall that confirmed that a 13-year-old Betty had been two inches taller than a thirteen-year-old Jughead. 

Maybe Lodgeville took all the horrors of Riverdale and magnified them, funhouse-mirror style. Maybe it didn't matter, though. Maybe in both places, you could always find people like the Lodges, the kinds of families that gleefully destroyed a place, taking hold and never letting up until they'd sucked the whole town dry in the name of boundless greed. 

"Hey," Sweet Pea said now.

Veronica started.

He was still in his fancy clothes, sans his ruined jacket, which he'd removed in the fight with Andre. He had saved the pocket square, which he now fished out of his pants packet and pressed down on the table, trying to get the wrinkles out.

"Have someone iron it," Veronica said faintly.

Sweet Pea gave her a wry look.

"The Farm's picking up Sage and Max, so I'm gonna go too. Plus your parents know who I am, so I'm toast in this town. FP's gotta pay off his and Alice's parole officers before they can go, though. Chic got them your eighty-six thousand dollars, so he should be able to."

"I wish I'd given more," Veronica said immediately.

Sweet Pea just kept looking at her.

"Jason and Polly want you to come too," he said. "Like, really want you to come."

He said this like it was significant.

"I don't want to stay with my parents," Veronica told him. She felt miserable and she was sure it was leaching into her face, her voice, her fingers, which were now trying to help smooth down his pocket square even if that was a stupid endeavor.

"The Farm could protect Jason and Polly," Sweet Pea said slowly. "They could probably protect you."

"Right, but they seem like a cult," Veronica said.

"Fringe religious movement isn't necessarily a cult," Sweet Pea pointed out. "They get, like, rockstars visiting them. Actors. Liberal politicians."

Well, sure, but so did Scientology, probably. And Veronica's question, really, was whether it mattered when her end goal was still to return to her own world. Could this Farm even help her do that?

Now Betty came out of the hall. Toni was helping her carry a massive duffel bag full of clothes that would presumably tide the both of them over at the Farm. They paused at the table, exhaling hard. Sweet Pea patted Veronica's hand once and, abandoning his pocket square for the moment, went to pick up their duffel and bring it out to FP's truck for them.

"Thank you," Toni told Sweet Pea, clearly meaning it. Then, as Jughead came out with his own duffel, she went to help him.

"V?" Betty said, in the meantime. "You okay? You're coming with us, right?"

 _My parents want you dead,_ Veronica thought. _They want you_ dead.

God, what was keeping her father from killing the Joneses in her world? Was he waiting until his anger felt righteous enough? Until he had the right person to take the fall? Her parents were all about timing, all about lining up the pieces so that no blame could be traced back to them. In this world, they'd ordered the _capo_ to kill everyone and make it look like Chic did it, which was a solid plan because if anybody came across like a murderer it was Chic. But how long until her Hermione or Hiram Lodge came up with a similar plan?

Veronica didn't want to go back to those people. In any world. 

But she thought she could help catch them in her world, where they were her tigers. Just as unpredictable and dangerous as these tigers, maybe, but not so powerful. Easier to design cages for. 

"I'm coming with you," Veronica said. "On one condition. We start making serious plans to go back, B."

-

Cheryl, regrettably, claimed Sweet Pea, Fangs, and Toni for her car, genuinely interested in reconnecting with her old kidnappers, all of whom seemed less interested in reconnecting with her. When Veronica tried to find out what this was about, Cheryl just said, peppily, "Have you ever heard of what happens when Stockholm Syndrome is cunningly turned back on one's captors, Veronica?" 

So Veronica decided she didn't want to know what that was about.

Jughead went with his father, to go casually bribe some parole officers. No one acted like this was a strange father-son bonding activity except for FP, who didn't seem thrilled that Jughead was thrilled to be purchasing his father and stepmother's freedom with money his stepbrother had acquired through crime. 

"Just take the out!" Alice hissed at him.

"Our boys shouldn't be wrapped up in this," FP said. "Snakes take care of their young, Alice!"

Then he stomped off for his truck anyway, clearly worn down by arguing with both Alice and Jughead.

This left Veronica with all the Coopers and Jason Blossom, in a van that smelled like patchouli and flowers.

"So we escape," Veronica said, when they were on the road. She was just testing out the idea. "To a farm."

"Not just any farm," said Polly, from the front passenger seat. She turned and smiled broadly at the others: Alice and Chic in the roomy middle seat, where Chic had claimed two seats for himself because he was a selfish monster; and Veronica and Betty in the cramped back. "To a farm of progressive, anti-establishment, anti-conservative--"

"Free thinking," Jason said, with a gleam in his eye. "Uninhibited--"

Polly said, "Shamanistic, holistic, herbalistic--" 

"Oh my god," said Veronica immediately. Alice said it, too. She had until now been surveying Jason's van like it didn't impress her, but here she started shaking her head and saying, "No, nope, no," over and over. She undid her seatbelt. Betty looked ready to lunge over Veronica and force her mother to do it back up again, but then Polly spoke up.

"Oooh, mom, you're just going to love it when you see the babies!"

"The babies?" Alice said.

"Juniper," Betty put in encouragingly. "And Dagwood!"

Alice blinked and put her seatbelt back on. The babies appeared to have some powerful sway over her, but not that powerful, because after a few seconds she said, sounding scandalized, "They're _called_ that?"

Chic, who was still sprawled on the middle seat, said, "Jesus. What's wrong with this family? Am I right, mom?"

"Nothing's wrong with us," Jason said. "Mother knows that."

"Yeah," said Polly. "Shut up, Chic. We're perfect."

Here Veronica felt she had to speak up, not to support Chic, but because she didn't want Alice or Betty getting ideas about remaining in this world, with their supposed perfect family, when they were all fleeing to a cult.

"You're Jason's distant cousin, Polly," she said. "And your father is married to Jason's mother--" here she shot a look at Alice, and found her making a face but no more moved than that, "and your mother is married to the father of the boy who's in love with Betty, and Jason is a Wes Anderson character, apparently, and you're all related to _Chic_."

There was a moment of silence as everyone processed this. Chic broke it.

" _Sin Touch_ magazine thinks you had a fling with your adopted brother, Veronica."

Veronica horribly, could come up with no rebuttal for this.

"Right," Alice said suddenly, undoing her seatbelt again. "I'm coming back there."

"Mom," Chic began to whine. "You said we were gonna talk about _my_ cut of the leftover money--"

"Shut up. Talk to Polly or something," Alice snapped, as she climbed over the seat to insert herself between Betty and Veronica.

Chic's eyes widened. Before he could snap something back, Polly began to press several polaroids on him. They appeared to be images of very small blanket bundles.

Betty looked strangely pleased.

"Mom?" she said. "Thanks for not listening to Chic and staying to help Jughead and the others."

Alice pursed her lips together.

"Having the chance to run doesn't always mean you should," she said in a low voice, after a few seconds. "Having the chance to leave, to pretend you can have everything perfect while the world still burns... Well. I don't think we get to do that every time. Sometimes we have to take care of our own instead. And, really, you're much more of a thinker than Chic is in some ways."

A smile broke across Betty's face.

"But Chic has excellent qualities too!" Alice added hastily.

Veronica did not want to interrupt them, but neither did she want this anti-leaving talk to continue for a single minute.

"Betty? Mrs. C? This is lovely, but how are we going to get back to our own world?" she asked desperately. "I was going to try and use my parents' connections to find a way, but now we're, well-- My father will see this as declaring war!"

Betty became mulish.

"Veronica, _he_ declared war ages ago. Look what he did to Riverdale, to Lodgeville--"

"And," Alice put in innocently, "we should consider the possibility that maybe we can't go back to our world. Maybe we have to stay here, with FP and Jughead, and--"

She broke off, catching Veronica's expression.

"...the fact that your parents have total mastery of our town because all you Lodges are revealing yourselves to be tyrannical villains, which is really your fault when you think about it..."

She trailed off, prim and satisfied. Veronica rolled her eyes.

"No," she told Alice and Betty flatly. "I do not accept this. Look at you, B. You're a sexy criminal with no college prospects. Mrs. C, you just had to make the choice to relocate your whole family to what is probably a cult. The Joneses have been forced to dump way more bodies than just Jason Blossom's in this universe. I bet the Lodgeville murder rate could match like that of twelve Black Hoods. Archie is brainwashed. Cheryl's even weirder than she is in our world. People are being made homeless and arrested and hurt to put money in my father's pockets--"

She broke off, breathing hard, before resuming again.

"We _have_ to keep our world from turning into this one. We have to. We owe it to our world!"

Then she sat back against the uncomfortable beaded car seat, spent.

Alice looked unimpressed.

"Well, come on," she said. "It's not all bad. I'm sorry you've realized your parents are monsters, Veronica, but some of us have families we like in this world--"

Betty's hand crept across Alice's lap, to prod at Veronica's. Veronica clasped it almost on instinct. Alice stopped talking in order to stare at this, eyebrow arched, mouth waspish.

"I get it," Betty said simply. "And, V, it's really, really good that you want to protect our world."

"Oh, honestly!" Alice snapped. 

But Veronica just held her friend's hand and felt relieved.


	16. The Return

Alice was prepared to hate the Farm. When they reached it in the night and were shown to their beds, she saw so little of it that she fell asleep secure in her hate.

In the morning, however, a peculiar golden light streamed in through the blue toile curtains. FP sat by her bed, nursing a mug of coffee. When she put a hand on his thigh, he clasped it and brought it to his lips, but otherwise didn't move.

"Get in here," Alice demanded, pulling back her hand, but also lifting up her blanket.

His gaze was both tired and amused.

"Can't. We're not alone," he said. 

So then she pulled herself up and realized that Betty and Veronica were sharing a bed on the other side of the room; Chic was collapsed on a couch, snoring; and Jughead had curled up in an easy chair some time in the night. Through a door, she could see a small bathroom connecting this room to another. Polly and Jason were bustling about in there, Jason pretending to trim the uncertain concept he was apparently calling a beard. Polly stuck her head into their room.

"Mom!" she said. "You're up!"

Then, in a cruel reversal of the many, many times Alice had pulled her wailing out of bed for her morning appointments at the nutritionist and dermatologist, Polly strode to the window right by Alice and pulled the curtains wide.

"The Farm!" she said jubilantly, as Alice and FP groaned, shielding their eyes from the glaring light. "Take a look!"

Alice refused to get up and give into this cheery forcefulness almost on principle, but it was too late to avoid the Farm. They were in a house that looked down on a whole valley of the Farm. The Farm unfurled itself beyond the window, the sky above it impossibly blue and the fields marked by houses, barns, dotted lines of white picket fences, and orderly rows of crops. 

It put Alice in mind of the postcards of Riverdale they'd sold in the Texaco gas station years ago. Missing You Here In The Best Of Riverdale, promising a town that had never really existed, a place where early spring came right on time and coaxed blooming flowers onto the porch posts, where here and there a cow poked its head over the fence to rest on the hood of an old car. The Best Of Riverdale, which had perhaps never existed in Riverdale and had almost certainly fled Lodgeville, seemed to hang in sheets of sunshine over the view. The Best Of Riverdale had come to the Farm.

When Polly and Jason invited them to the Farm's best-known breakfast hub, a familiar face bobbed up to greet them.

"The morning special for everybody, and burgers and onion rings for the two gentlemen," Pop Tate said affably, depositing FP and Jughead's truly heinous choice of breakfast before them. 

Alice was so surprised to see Pop that she almost forgot to close a hand on FP's wrist before he could grab his burger. She managed it, though. Then she said, "No. They'll have fruit and oatmeal like the rest of us. This campaign against their arteries ends now."

Jughead had adroitly nabbed his burger before it could be taken away from him, but FP lost out, and was left regarding a bowl of oatmeal with a defeated expression. Alice tuned him out.

She could look at FP all day and enjoy it, even a defeated FP (alright, sometimes especially a defeated FP), but right now two people were far more interesting than even he could be. One was chewing on her toes. The other was placidly farting into his diaper and then crying about it, settling only when Alice tickled his belly and cooed at him. Dagwood Blossom and Juniper Cooper. Betty was every bit as entranced as she was, currently explaining to a proud Jason just how decidedly incredible Juniper was in every way. This left Veronica to pay attention to the Farm.

"Sweet Pea!" she hissed at them, when Jughead's tall friend came in, trailed by two people Alice didn't know at all and also didn't care about. "He's here with his family. And Toni came in a few seconds ago with Cheryl and an old man. And Fangs and his brother just walked in. How have we all just found each other again when there's like no cellphone reception in this valley?"

"All find exactly who they are looking for at the Farm," Jason said serenely.

Veronica shot him a strange look. Alice hardly noted it. Though Veronica was right that their table kept expanding beyond the confines of the Cooper-Smith-Jones-Blossom family, Alice's desired circle was very small. Her children. Her grandchildren. Her husband, playing footsie with her under the table even if he was still annoyed about his oatmeal. 

"Josie?" she heard Veronica say. "Melody? Val?"

Then Alice had to look up, stunned by the voice of the Mayor's daughter of all people. Josie McCoy and her coterie of scantily dressed teenage attention-grabbers were regarding Veronica like they weren't exactly happy to see her but were too polite to say so.

"Oh," Josie was saying, with a little laugh. "My mom said you'd defected, but I didn't really believe it."

" _Defected_?" Veronica said. "Wha--I thought you were at boarding school!"

"I am," Josie said slowly. "Farmville Academy, here at the Farm. My mom sent me here to keep me away from..."

She trailed off, as though there was no way to say it politely.

"Oh, hey, it's the person I was here to meet. Hi, Kevin!" Josie said, a made a dash for a table in the corner, where the sheriff's son and a vaguely familiar, delinquent-seeming young man in an orange vest were sipping out of the same milkshake.

Veronica whipped her head around so fast that her hair smacked Jughead in the face.

" _Kevin_?"

Kevin Keller mouthed something to Josie that looked like _do I know her?_

"You don't!" said Cheryl Blossom, loudly enough to be heard across the room. "She wouldn't invite you to her seventh birthday party because she said you were too fat!"

She smiled broadly. Both Kevin and Veronica looked agonized.

"Does the Farm just take...everybody?" Betty said now.

"Only people committed to principles of justice for all human beings," Polly assured her. "And ecoterrorism."

Alice choked on her oatmeal.

"I so wanted to leave Lodgeville," Polly mused, "and come here. And now we're all here!"

The _coming here_ was no longer something Alice could understand, but the _leaving_ was. So rather than chastise Polly, who after all she'd only just reconciled with, she pulled Dagwood out of his basket and clutched him to her, while considering the best way to begin gently engineering an exit strategy from the Farm. Common ground. They would have to begin with common ground.

"Polly, as you know, I also long dreamed of leaving the Southside," she began.

"Oh, not just the Southside, Mother," said Jason Blossom, ruiner of little girls and conversations alike. "The Northside as well, Mother."

Polly nodded vigorously.

"I despised our whole town. Its weird gender double standards. Its lack of boundless green fields. Its oppressive cul de sacs. All of it wasn't for me! And now I'm here, learning how to paint and plant and handle artillery in case we have to resort to violence to preserve our civil rights--"

"What?" Alice demanded.

Jughead's tall friend wandered by, leaning over Veronica, who for some reason patted him absentmindedly on the forearm. He cut off the diatribe she was fully prepared to launch into.

"Hey, Polly?" he said. "That guy in the overalls over there says you know how to safely defuse a pipe bomb?"

"She knows how to _what_?" Alice shrieked.

Polly brightened. 

"I do, actually!" she said. 

-

After breakfast, Polly had a full morning at school, then an afternoon day job teaching people to shoot rifles, apparently. Jason had a morning with the babies, then an afternoon at school, also with the babies, because the school here had a nursery. 

"I'm a stay at home father, Mother," he told Alice. "There are no traditional gender roles at the Farm. All simply find the jobs they were born to do."

This was beyond creepy. And unnatural. Societies weren't supposed to fulfill your dreams. They were supposed to crush them. Alice had been around long enough to know that. But Jason at least agreed to leave the babies with her while he took the other new teens to be registered at the school. So she ended up with two bassinets, an expectant FP, and a Betty and Veronica who were haring off in other directions for some reason, Betty after her sister, Veronica after Josie McCoy and Kevin Keller.

"Betty! Veronica!" Alice hissed at them. "Meeting! Now!"

They'd been concocting plans to perhaps leave this world last night. As far as Alice was concerned, those plans were ludicrous. They had so much to do in this world. Like extricating her whole family from an ecoterrorist cult.

But Veronica just gave her an easy little wave, and Betty offered an apologetic look, and then they were both off.

"Can you believe that?" Alice demanded of FP.

He was blowing raspberries on Juniper's arms, making her giggle.

"What?" he said. "Oh. It's Betty. She's off for what she wants. She's your daughter, isn't she? I'm more worried about whatever pound of flesh the Farmer will want."

The hair on the back of Alice's neck stood up.

"The Farmer?" she said.

"Sure," said FP. "Somebody's gotta run this pony show, Alice. Can't say I know a lot about her, either. She hates Lodge, hates his Fox Forest project. That we have in common. Otherwise, can't say she's got much reason to welcome two old felons at all."

By _two old felons_ Alice supposed he meant the two of them. Well, he could speak for himself. She was -- actually, she probably was a felon in this world. She'd assumed that she could get them all out of the Southside, keep him, and it wouldn't have to be more complicated than that, but perhaps it was, because she was now a felon. 

But she didn't want to talk in the busy converted barn Pop was using as a diner in this world. 

"You take Juniper. I'll take Dagwood," she instructed FP. "We're going back to Polly's house."

So then they walked a grassy road hung with sunshine, all the way to the little blue house on the edge of the valley, the babies very light and giggly in their arms. Alice hated putting Dagwood down in Jason and Polly's tiny living room. Hated tearing herself away from them for a second. But it had to be done.

"We need to talk," she said.

They needed to be on the same page about getting their family out of here, and into normalcy. She knew she could bring him around -- just knew it. FP pretended to like his life, the violence that made up his ecosystem, but he was tired of it. Now she knew that he was tired of it.

"I know," said FP.

But then he didn't talk about what she wanted to talk about.

"You noticed this business between Jug and Betty too, huh?" he said. He'd picked up a wooden rattle and was waving it over Juniper's face.

"What?" Alice said.

Oh. Right. In another world, Betty and Jughead were in love. But this wasn't Betty and Jughead's world. This was theirs. Hers and FP's. Alice had called dibs on the Jones connection in this world.

But FP just shook his head, like he knew what she was thinking.

"Alice," he said, short about it. "I know you. I know you care what people think. But they're not harming anyone, and I've told Jug he has my blessing."

Of course he had FP's blessing. He got to date her Betty. But Alice was expected to approve Betty dating a--

A--

Well, a Jones. A Southsider. Child of a felon. Like Betty was. Alice found herself frowning, a sight that apparently made Dagwood laugh.

God, she was a murderess here. And she'd committed crimes in this world and her own. She'd done wrong. The doing wrong wasn't the trouble, though. The trouble was that she wanted to be both known for how far she'd go for her family, how intensely she would protect her daughters' reputations, and not known at all. Because she would go very far indeed.

Being seen had always been both a high and a deeply fearsome thing for her. When people saw a woman who was also a casual monster, they didn't forgive easy. She'd always envied FP for how easy it was to forgive him.

Now he stood and crossed to her, cupping her face.

"Honey?" he said gently. "Come on. They're kids--"

"It's not about them--" Alice found herself protesting.

He kissed her nose, his scruff tickling her.

"I know. But whatever you're carrying right now, whatever's got you looking spooked. I'll carry it with you. That's all we can do."

Oh, god. Maybe the Farm would be fine if she just stayed here with him. Maybe she could forgive ten thousand abnormal scenarios if she didn't have to trade him away anymore.

Because even with the Farm, she still didn't want to leave this world. To go back to what? Her FP? Who drank freely and raised hell and slunk around the Southside, who looked at her like she was a casual traitor? Who took back his pleas to leave Hal as soon as they left his mouth? Who she'd tried to frame for murder, and who was married to someone else? She'd have a long road ahead of her, fighting for that FP. She wanted to have him. She did. But why did she always, always have to be the one to fight? 

She cupped his face now and kissed him. He kissed her back, hungry, and his hunger wound itself around her heart.

_You don't want me to leave you any more than I want to go,_ she thought. _You wanted me for you, and you for me. You could even be halfway-normal if you got that. You_ want _to be, or at least you want to try, and I didn't notice, more fool me._

When they pulled apart, he was breathing hard.

"We should put the little ones to sleep if we can," he began, "so we can--"

Spoken like a man who had forgotten what babies were like and how long they'd stay sleeping, but yes. Yes, if they could, they should, if only a quickie while the twins slept.

Before she could voice this wild thought, though, he straightened in her arms, squinting at the window.

"Betty and Veronica?" he said, like he was confused.

Alice turned to the window. Betty and Veronica were approaching the house from different directions. They hadn't seen each other yet. Veronica was tripping along behind a black cat that jumped from fence post to fence post. Betty was arm in arm with a fair woman.

Alice took a step back. 

Her mind raced. She could grab FP and go. No, they had to grab Betty as well, and the babies. But Veronica could stay. Veronica wanted to go back. It would be a few minutes before the woman reached the front door, though, so--

The fair woman pushed open the door.

There was no explanation for what had happened to the past few minutes.

"Alice Smith?" said the woman, voice even. "I'd like to see you first. Then you, Mr. Jones."

"You the Farmer?" FP asked gruffly.

Oh god. Of course she was.

"Of course I am," said the woman. "Don't worry. Everyone has a place here. We just have to figure out what it is. Why don't you take the babies upstairs while I talk to your wife?"

FP prodded her forward, then reached for the babies' baskets.

"See you in a bit, then, honey," he said. Alice heard his feet clattering up the stairs, and wanted to demand that he turn right back around. But she couldn't get the words out.

He wouldn't see her. He wouldn't. This maleficium-practicing, occult-worshipping, neopagan hack, who'd stolen her daughter in two universes, was now going to take Alice away from the man Alice wanted, the man Alice lo--

"Now, you know that in your universe I'm a Collector. The Farmer's someone completely different in your universe," murmured the woman. "So stop dawdling and come along."

And leave her family in the Farm? This wasn't even the end of the story. This was the middle of the story--

"It's not your story," said the woman sharply. Betty and Veronica appeared behind her. Alice wanted to protest, wanted to ask what would happen to this FP--

"This world's Jug," Betty began. "And my friend, her name is--"

"Yes, what happens to these people? This world?" Veronica said, talking over Betty like she was aware they didn't have much time now. "When we go?"

The fair woman quirked a brow.

"What do you mean? she said. "It keeps on going. Everything you did here, your here selves did. Your other selves continue the work you started now. I doubt they even know you've been here, since all you did was push them to make their wishes come true--"

"Their wishes?" Betty said.

"A beloved, a unified family, a better character," said the woman, waving.

"So their wishes brought us here?" Veronica asked, eyes widening.

The fair-haired woman shrugged.

"Who knows? Could have been mine. I'm not too fond of your father's Fox Forest project, and having a Veronica Lodge in my clutches to help me fight him will come in handy. Forests are very important to my work, you know."

"Farming or collecting?" Alice bit out, getting angry now.

The fair woman looked at her evenly.

"Ask me what I farm and collect," she said. "No. Don't. I'll just tell you."

She smiled. The smile had too many teeth, and they were wrong. They were the teeth of a cat.

"Universes," she said.

-

But, like an absolute coward, the fair woman was gone when they woke up.

There was a note on the windowseat, right next to the cat, which meowed at Alice when she reached for the note. Alice batted at the cat with her purse. It batted back.

The note said,

_Gone to the Farm, as you know. Please lock the door as you let yourselves out._

After they carried the carpet out to the car, Alice very deliberately did not lock the door. Betty did it. Betty _would_ be the one to cave. 

Then she asked, "Mom? Why don't we put it in the trunk?"

Alice had to stop and consider what the hell she was talking about for a minute. Why it was important not to shove the carpet in the trunk. Why was anything important at this point?

Polly, the babies, FP. All slipped through her fingers, all _gone_ \-- 

"Mom?" Betty tried again.

Alice kept her voice very crisp when she answered.

"If we do that, it could get all bent out of shape. Your father will be able to tell it hasn't been cleaned."

They rolled it up and put it on top of the car. Even though Alice hardly cared about it now. The urgency of the carpet, of tying up that loose end, was gone.

_What do I do?_ Alice thought wildly, her thoughts too loud in the silence of the ride back. _What do I do?_

She'd been fine with her life when she'd left. It hadn't been ideal, but it had been fine. She'd thought the only real loose end was the carpet. But that wasn't the only loose end at all. She had a daughter and two grandchildren out there somewhere, and she wanted them home. She had a son who had murdered someone. She had Betty, who apparently had depths of wildness Alice could only dream of. She was still married to Hal, of all people.

No. No. Her life was all loose ends.

_I'm not going to let Hal back in the house,_ she thought slowly. _I'm going to get my cut of the paper. He can go fuck Penelope Blossom and found his own rag if he wants to._

_And_

_I'm going to have my cake. And I'm going to eat it too._

Her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. FP in this world clearly thought he could lure her back to the Serpents with all his talk of loyalty. Well, he had another thing coming. She'd seen what he really wanted. Normalcy. What if _she_ dragged _him_ to that? Would he kick and scream? Too bad. She'd force him into a semi-respectable life anyway. And she'd make him help her lure back her daughter, her grandchildren.

This resolved, she was finally able to exhale. In the silence of the car, she adjusted her mirror and peered at the backseat.

"Betty?" she said. "Your seatbelt. I think we've had enough of living dangerously."

"What?" Betty said, startled out of thoughts of her own. "Oh, sorry."

She buckled her seatbelt, just as Veronica spoke up.

"I don't think I want that article in the _Register_ anymore, Mrs. Cooper."

"I don't know why you ever thought I'd give it to you," Alice said. "We aren't a forum for Lodge propaganda, Veronica."

Veronica folded her hands in her lap.

"Good," she told Alice. "That is exactly why you are my favorite publication."


	17. Three New Wishes

Veronica asked to be dropped off at school, and was. As she watched the Cooper station wagon pull away from the curb, her phone buzzed.

She had twenty-four missed texts from Archie. Twenty-four hours ago, Veronica would have found this romantic, but now she just thought, _wait. I haven't been missing for twenty-four hours. I'm pretty sure I was only gone for one or two._

Some of the texts weren’t even about her. Many were about her father. One said Archie was waiting for her at the Pembrooke. Another said this was fine because he was with her dad. Several more said that her dad -- who was an amazing person and who loved Veronica completely and who they should all love and trust (so went texts 14-16) had shown Archie how to play dominoes, a game of cunning strategy between men, and that he, Archie, would not let Veronica down by losing to Hiram at this important cultural man game.

Veronica just stared at her phone.

"What?" she asked it. "A game of cunning strategy between men?"

Her father had strong feelings about masculinity, she knew. He was a traditionalist. But now more than ever she suspected he was a traditionalist who was fucking with Archie. 

Also, a monster. 

Hiram had hurt many more people than just Archie, as the entire town of Lodgeville had been able to attest. But Archie was the person in front of her. So Archie felt like a good place to begin fixing things. 

_Meet me at Pop’s for dinner?_ she typed out. _We have to talk._

Veronica Lodge did not break up via text. 

But break up with him she would, despite the twinge of pain in her chest at the thought. She did care about Archie. But she thought maybe she’d never cared about him the right way. She’d forced him to be her goodness. Her anchor. But turning someone into your tool like that wasn’t right. 

She hit send. 

Then she called her abuelita. 

_Can I come stay with you?_ was on the tip of her tongue. _Remember when I refused to come stay with you because I didn’t want mom to be alone in Riverdale? I wish I’d gone with you. I don’t want to go home to them._

But if she didn’t, and if she hadn’t come to Riverdale, who knew what kind of Veronica Lodge she might have become? Even more spoiled? Even more charmingly callous?

In the end, she just asked Abuelita for a favor, ignoring the voice in her head that sounded like her mother and kept saying _that is earmarked for your first apartment, Veronica. Or the exotic trip you might be dying to take right before college_. Then, once Abuelita agreed, Veronica promised to work on her Spanish, pray every night, and call faithfully on Sundays; hung up; and dialed Weatherbee. 

This call -- now, this call was a thoroughly Lodge action. But she comforted herself with the thought that she was being a Lodge for a good cause. 

After a quick trip to the bank and the hardware store (thankfully the small one run by Mr. Nailbolt, not a massive Abode Depot), she was ready for Sunnyside Trailer Park. It was as shabby as ever, all packed dirt and unkempt grass. But the trailers were rusting beneath a blue, unpolluted sky, and there was no SoDale yet to cast a shadow. She examined the trailers until she found the number Weatherbee had given her, but maybe she needn’t have called Weatherbee. It was the only trailer that was dwarfed by a child’s playset and had a very small boy making mud pies just outside. 

"Max!" she said.

"No thanks," said Max, without even a look at her. 

When Veronica blinked and took a step towards him, determined not to be rebuffed, he scowled and held up dirt-streaked hands. Although he was much smaller than Veronica, so small that the connection to Sweet Pea wouldn't have been evident if not for the shared glower, he managed to crane his neck and examine her dress.

"Nice dress," he said.

"Thank you?" said Veronica.

"I wanna touch it," he said, wiggling his muddy fingers.

Veronica was affronted.

"This is Alice and Olivia!" she said.

Max contemplated this for a few seconds.

"I hate those ladies," he decided.

He was absolutely related to Sweet Pea. Veronica gave up and retreated to the front stoop of the trailer. She climbed the dingy wooden stairs to a front door only slightly less dented and rusted than the Jones door, and knocked. She told herself that there was a distinct possibility his sister would open it.

Sweet Pea opened it. He was in an undershirt and boxers, but he managed to look down at her like he was the fully-dressed one and she had shown up in her underwear. Veronica took in a breath and tipped her chin up regally.

"Here," she said, holding out the check. "A gift far more above-board than any previously offered, courtesy of Veronica Cecilia Lodge. You evince total loyalty to your crew, so I know you will allocate it fairly among all the residents of Sunnyside. I ask only that you keep it an anonymous donation."

Sweet Pea scrutinized the check for a moment. Veronica felt some peculiar nervousness take hold of her. She was hardly ever this nervous, but now it hit her -- she trusted him utterly, and he rightfully trusted her not at all. Maybe it had been this way back in Lodgeville, too. But in Lodgeville he'd seemed to take to her, at least. To _enjoy_ her, not as a miracle or dream or charming rich girl, but just as a person. Now all of that was gone. He looked at her outstretched hand the way a cat regarded another cat daring to slink past it in an alleyway.

After an atrocious wait that probably lasted only a few seconds, he pocketed the check.

"I'll split it up among everybody. But we'd better not get arrested trying to cash this," he warned her. Then he began to close his door. Veronica stuck out a hand, waving her pearl bracelet in his face.

"Wait!" she said. "Listen. I'm aware that my family paid for General Pickens' decapitation and tried to blame you all for it. It was a senseless and vile frame-up. _Quid pro quo_ is in order. So..."

Now she held out the bag she'd picked up at the hardware store. As Sweet Pea reached into it, seizing the contents and leaving her holding an empty plastic bag, she spoke quickly.

"I was thinking: you, me, the Sodale sign by the old drive-in. Midnight."

She gave him her most winning New York City sophisticate smile, then added, magnanimously, she thought, "You can bring your friends. Veronica Lodge doesn't discriminate, not if the tagger has experience."

She didn't quite want him to bring his friends. But she was going to have to patch things up with Jughead at some point. Betty was her friend again. In time, Jughead and Archie would be too. In time, Sweet Pea and Fangs would be. Then they could all work to protect this town together.

But Sweet Pea was still coolly examining her color choices.

"Serpents don't tag in purple, halfpint," he said, after a minute. "And if that sign gets tagged, we all know who gets blamed. Us. While your daddy acts the martyr. No dice."

Then he moved to close the door again, like it was no big deal, like he hadn't just smeared muddy hands all over Veronica's visions of a better town and a better friends group and a better Veronica.

"Wait!" she said desperately, just before the door closed completely. "I'm _not_ trying to get you blamed! I just thought, since you _like_ tagging--"

Sweet Pea let the door creak slowly open again.

"You don't know what I like," he said. "Anyway, I'm not tagging these days."

Veronica stamped her foot.

"So what are you doing?"

"Studying," he said, short about it. "I have a test on Monday."

"Well, I didn't know that," Veronica pointed out. "Otherwise I would have suggested we study together. Where do you study? Here?"

"No," Sweet Pea said.

"So where?" Veronica demanded. "Can I come?"

"None of your business, and no," Sweet Pea said slowly. "And you did know I have a test. It's for AP Comparative Government. We're in that class together. You just didn't notice or care that I'm in that class."

Then he closed the door in her face. This time for real. Veronica stared at it, brokenhearted. She felt like saying, _I'm turning over a new leaf! I'm completely different now! I have a heart the size of France, if only you'll give me a chance._

She said none of those things. Just stood there with her hand poised to knock, never quite connecting the action, watching her own fist slowly crumple and drop to her side. She felt thoroughly un-Veronica-Lodge-like. It was a horrible feeling. With boys, she'd come to like and expect a certain clinginess, a certain devotion. Rejection was the wrong animal entirely for her. She almost wanted to tantrum.

She didn't.

"So you found that Betty Cooper girl?" Josie had said, back on the Farm. "The one you were having visions of? The one who you were 'best friends in another life with?'"

Veronica had looked at Josie with wide eyes.

" _What_?" she'd said.

Josie had shifted uncomfortably.

"My mom said that you came to her with some questions. About whether an heiress could be stripped of her fortune for going crazy. Because -- I don't know -- you thought you were seeing this whole other world!"

That was all Veronica had been able to get out of her before the cat had arrived, prowling around the corner of a fencepost, unmistakably the same cat the Collector had owned. 

But maybe Veronica didn't need more than that to put together the story of the other Veronica. She could think her up. Veronica had always been excellent at thinking up stories featuring Veronica. 

This time, she thought of a Veronica who was callous, but so charming hardly anybody ever noticed the callousness. The Audrey Hepburn of being polite in order to hide horrific aims. A girl who was dating Nick St. Clair. A girl who'd convinced her _capo_ to ensnare a Southside townie, another girl, one whose family was holding out on Veronica's father. 

But then one day, as Betty had explained to Toni several hours and a universe ago, the other Veronica had begun having visions of a world where her family hadn't taken over. Where things were better. Where she wasn't dating a horrible person, she wasn't actively priming her adoptive brother to be her minion, and she had a real best friend -- not just people who were forced to say they were glad to see her because she'd invited them to her seventh birthday party.

Maybe the other Veronica had wanted out of her life. Maybe, when she'd realized that the girl she was trying to trick might connect her to a better life somehow, she'd tried to organize a meeting.

 _I think she wanted to turn it around,_ Veronica decided. _No matter how horrible those Lodges were, no matter the awful things we_ did _, I think the other Veronica wanted to turn herself and her world around._

And if that Veronica could dream of that, despite the insurmountable odds, maybe Veronica-Veronica needed to stop complaining.

She slipped down the rickety wooden stoop, back to Max's mudpile. Max was now almost completely covered in mud, from head to toe, and apparently working on getting the spots he'd missed. Veronica examined him for a moment. 

"What?" Max said.

She leaned down, putting her hands on her knees, and made her voice extra sweet because this was a child.

"I _love_ this. Is it therapeutic? Like a spa? Either way, Veronica Lodge adores it. As you get older, you'll learn that self care is paramount."

"What?" Max repeated, smacking his hands in mud and making her jump. 

Veronica took a deep breath. Her goals were great. Not merely self-reinvention -- that was last season's goal. But the salvation of this town, of the Southside. And to do this she would need not _capos_ , but friends. And she knew exactly who she wanted to fold into her friends' group next. 

"Where does your uncle hold his study sessions?" she said. "I'm not trying to sabotage them. He won't find a better ally than yours truly. I happen to be phenomenal at Comparative Government."

Max looked unconvinced.

"I was in the model UN at Spence, you know," Veronica added, getting a little desperate.

This seemed to glance of off Max, who only said, "What do I get?"

Veronica straightened up, sighed, and smoothed her skirt down.

It was only a dress. New friendships, new selves, the Southside, of all Riverdale? Those things were not acceptable sacrifices. The dress was. That could go on the altar of furthering Lodge aims. Nothing else. 

-

Betty and Alice had to wrestle the new carpet down off of the car. It took a lot of time and straining and teamwork, but they eventually had it laid out in the living room. It was, down to the milk stain, exactly the same carpet as the old carpet.

"That's resolved," Alice said, straightening up.

"No, mom," Betty said slowly. "It's not."

Alice's instinct was to insist that yes, yes it was. The book was closed. The adventure was over. The loose ends had been trimmed, collected, and possibly burned to a crisp.

But things did not feel over for her, either, and so she hesitated for a moment. That moment gave Betty her opening.

"You knew I would help you right away--"

"We needed to get the carpet, Betty," Alice said, waving her off.

" _Not_ with the carpet, mom!" Betty said. Her tone was steel. "With everything. With everything, especially with this -- this dead body thing -- you know I'll always help you, and you take advantage of that! You know I love you, and you don't always use it the right way, and you don't always act like you love me!"

Alice stared at her, astonished. Betty was stiff and furious, eyes-red rimmed but mouth set. And this was colossally unfair of her. Alice loved her. Of course Alice loved her. As though Alice didn't do everything for her, for Polly, for Chic. As though Alice hadn't cleaved herself in two, her wants on one side, her needs on another, just to give Betty everything.

It was a testament to how good Alice was at control that she only rolled her eyes now.

"Oh, right, Elizabeth, because I'm the bad guy--"

"You can't love me and mistreat me, mom," Betty said, in that same hard, firm tone. "That's not fair."

Alice wanted to snap, _what's fair? Is being in an antiseptic, miserable marriage for over twenty years so_ you _can have everything I didn't_ fair _, Elizabeth?_

Maybe she would have said it, too. But the chiming of the doorbell cut her off. Both she and Betty jumped at it.

When Alice opened the door, a hopeful Jughead Jones looked down at her. The hope didn't last long. Alice's thin mouth extinguished it, which normally was just what Alice always set out to do when she saw Jughead.

But right now, suddenly, she wanted him to come in. She would never actually choose Jughead for a son, but at this particular moment she didn't completely hate him for Betty. Jughead was dutiful to his father no matter how horribly FP treated him, and, next to that, Alice didn't really see what Betty was complaining about.

Betty didn't give her a chance to make this parallel. She was already grabbing her coat. She shoved past Alice, who made an injured noise, and locked her hands around Jughead's.

"Bye, mom," Betty said, still plainly peevish.

"That's a very sullen bye!" snapped Alice.

" _Bye_ , mom," was all Betty said, obnoxiously teenage about it.

Maybe it was regaining and then losing Polly. Maybe it was gaining and then losing the twins. But the thought of Betty walking out like this didn't sit right, made her panicky and frightened.

"Wait," Alice said, voice creeping up. "Wait just one minute--"

"I'm going with Jughead," Betty retorted, as Jughead himself mostly looked wide-eyed. He had a tentative arm around Betty's shoulders and he hunkered into it, as if he was refusing to be separated.

Alice pointed a finger at them.

"You are texting me if you stay late at his trailer!" she said. "Because you still have a curfew, Elizabeth, and there are all kinds of dangers out there. So I had better know where you are, or I will be sending out a search party! And--and--"

Something occurred to her. It came out in a hiss, as she rooted through her pockets for money.

"Buy protection!"

Jughead's mouth dropped open. Alice focused the finger on him.

"I don't trust a Jones man not to prick the rubbers with thumbtacks. Everybody knows they're the type to trap a girl in falsely blissful family life--"

"Mom!" Betty said.

"What?" said Alice, because she didn't see the big deal here. "You buy your own condoms. Every girl knows that."

She folded a twenty into Betty's hand, closed the door, and then, heart racing, slid down it.

 _Try telling me I don't love you now_ , she thought.

But for once wrenching control back from Betty didn't feel good. It felt precarious. It felt like she had a time limit, like soon she'd need to do more than just make a scene to emerge the victor. 

She spent a few moments with her head in her hands, breathing hard.

Then she went to check on Chic. He'd been upstairs, napping, when she'd left him. At first she thought he was still napping now. But when she moved to close his door, he said, "Mom?"

She didn't think she had anything to tell him. All she'd wanted from Chic was to simply have him back. Even she could admit that, compared to his sisters, for him the standards were low.

But she still had something to say, and she had to say it to someone.

"You know, you're not Polly's replacement, no matter what Hal might have said," she said, wiping at the wet on her cheeks. "I love you both and you are both my children. So is Betty. I've wronged all of you, but that doesn't mean I love you any less."

Chic sat up.

"Nice to have one parent who feels that way," he said. "Be real. Is Hal even my father?"

She had no idea. She'd never had a paternity test done. But it seemed that, in both worlds, she'd maintained that Hal was his father, and Hal still hadn't wanted Chic. While FP, believing Chic wasn't his, had wanted him.

"There aren't that many other people who could be," she told Chic.

Then she closed his door and went to take a shower. She'd had one this morning, had one twice if you counted the morning in Lodgeville, but she felt like she needed sprucing up. Afterwards, she surveyed a closet full of comforting cardigans, pastel blouses, trim khaki slacks, and knee-length skirts, and chose something that felt refreshingly non-criminal. 

Sure, she'd always have a snake tattoo on her ass. But there _was_ some small comfort in not having rips in all your clothes.

She ran into Hal as she was walking out to the car. He was peering in through the windows.

"What are you doing?" Alice said.

He whirled around, a man caught out.

"Godammit!" he said.

"The term you're looking for is 'hello,'" Alice noted. "Hello to you too."

He raised a finger to the sky, a prophet of windowpeeping and skulking in hedges.

"You! You think you can take my daughters from me, Alice--"

"What?" Alice said. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not stopping you from seeing them. If Polly even wants to see you, which I'm sure she doesn't--"

Polly didn't even want to see her. And Alice was reasonably sure Polly liked her better.

"Yeah?" Hal said now, plainly angry for no reason. "Yeah? Well, you know what? It still smells like bleach in there, I bet!"

"Of course it might smell like bleach," Alice said flatly. "It's a common household cleaning agent. You're talking like a man who never did a single second of your own housework, because that is exactly what you are."

Hal pulled himself up, chest out.

"Oh yeah, Alice, well--"

She did not have time for this.

"Oh, go screw Penelope Blossom, Hal," she said, waving him off as she turned for the car.

She went to Pop's. It was a grease-filled wonderland, where every treat was guaranteed to clog the arteries. It was little better than a dive these days, when you thought about the types that frequented it, and that had been hired to bus the tables. It was the night haunt of delinquent teenagers who should be in their beds.

She was, for a moment, happy to see it. Then she shoved that emotion down. She wasn't here for happy. She had plans. Somewhere out there, in another world, there was another Alice who had all of her children, who had her grandchildren, who had a person she wanted to be with. Who had all of that, right at her fingertips.

 _God,_ Alice thought. _I cannot stand letting_ her _beat me._

Criminal Alice. Lowlife Alice. The Alice Alice had walked away from. What an unacceptable resolution: to think that the other Alice had won out. She'd settled for that ugly little house. Alice had never settled for that. Alice wouldn't settle. Alice would take what she wanted and drag it into her life, though.

She found FP bussing dirty dishes. 

She leaned against the chrome counter just to drink him in. It hit her all at once: how much thinner he was than his counterpart, how there were more strands of grey in his hair. How he still looked great, even in the stupid apron. 

"Alice, I'm working," he muttered, out of the corner of his mouth.

Like he cared about the dishes when she was right here, in her best twinset. Powder-blue, with the shirt cut lower than it strictly needed to be. 

He snuck a brazen look at her as he hefted up the plastic tub of dishes. Alice had been waiting for that. For a moment she got to admire his expression, the mingled surprise and hope, the furtive, dark edge of desire. Then he snapped his gaze forward and walked deliberately around the counter to the sink, like it meant nothing. 

He was such a liar. Alice followed him around the counter.

FP said, "This is staff only--"

"Pop doesn't mind," Alice said, waving him off. Pop was at the register, ringing someone up, so she called out, "Do you mind, Pop?"

"Oh, no, Alice," Pop said. "You know me. I'm not one to make a ruckus, and I've always liked y--"

"Great. Thanks," Alice said. 

FP, elbows deep in suds now, took on a knowing expression.

"Hey, Alice, how come you're coming in here, taking advantage of that poor old man--"

"I'm the one taking advantage of him?" Alice said, drawing herself up. "I'm not a felon who convinced him to hire me--"

FP's smile doubled as a grimace. 

"Oh, today I'm just a felon again. Figures. Tell me something, Alice. You ever get tired of this merry-go-round of personalities you got going on? Begging a guy for a favor one day, stomping all over him the next?"

Alice snapped her mouth closed. It wasn't 'stomping' to point out that FP was a felon. FP _was_ a felon. But while she'd spent another life happily reconciled to him, he wasn't reconciled to her. He'd just done her a favor. One involving dead bodies and lye.

"You run a gang, deal drugs, and put a boy's body in the river," she said, just to make it clear that the felon thing was factual, not personal. 

FP rolled his eyes at the tin ceiling, then turned to look at her, holding up a hand covered by a yellow rubber glove.

"And high and mighty Alice Cooper has done wrong, but not so much as me," he said, leaning in, all bitter eyes and perversely perfect teeth. "Well, don't get so excited just because you haven't broken every law, Alice. Nobody breaks them all."

"Oh, please. You don't even like breaking them!" Alice hissed. 

That came out wrong. It wasn't the best rebuttal. It was just another fact about him -- his worst features came out under hardship, and he was as tired by that as everyone else was. And, in hindsight, Alice wondered why she'd never bothered to notice before. Or maybe she had noticed, but she hadn't wanted to be the one to help him out of it. She'd been young, after all, and trapped on the claustrophobic Southside herself. She'd focused on pulling herself out. She didn't regret that. She didn't want to regret it. But maybe she'd become too placid, too used to middle-class suburban unhappiness. That she did regret.

FP was staring at her with abrupt, mute surprise now. Alice felt a small flash of gratification. He was always telling her he knew her, claiming she couldn't shed her skin, but this was the first time in maybe twenty years that she'd surprised him by knowing _him_. 

She didn't want to lose the moment in another fight. She reached for his hand and pulled off the wet glove, then traced his forearm, his knobbly wrists, his knuckles and big fingers. 

"Your arms are so skinny," she told him quietly. "Like toothpicks."

FP looked at the ceiling again. 

"That why you're here? To tell me how ugly my arms are?"

Well, no. But it was better than telling him how much she still enjoyed his hands, his mouth, his eyes. 

"I wanted to invite you to dinner," she said.

Now he focused on her, gaze intent. There was no moderation in the way he looked at her, and no playfulness. This would be a fight, and the end result was yet uncertain. She closed her fingers around his wrist and didn't let go, not wanting the uncertainty to distract her from her goal. 

"Last time you invited me to dinner," FP said slowly, with a dip of his chin like he wanted to make a point, "that work out, Alice?"

No. She'd wanted him imprisoned for a murder he hadn't committed, and which she'd had no proof he'd committed. There had been perhaps some light interrogation. But it wasn't going to go that way now.

"You want to spend time with me," she pointed out. "You invited me back to the Wyrm! And I was at your trailer last night--"

FP twisted out of her grasp and put his finger up, so close to her face it was almost touching her nose.

"Ah, but that's different. I invite you into my life, that's fine, isn't it? You get to be a snake again for an afternoon. You get all the perks of our code when you want it. But let's not pretend it works the same way when I dare to show my face in the fine Cooper household."

Then he pulled his glove back on, and turned back to his sink of dirty dishes. Alice felt furious, felt like storming off and leaving him to fester in his whole rotten life. 

She didn't. Instead she rested her hand on his back, just below his neck. feeling the warmth of his skin through his thin white shirt. 

"I'd like to do it at my house, but we don't have to," she said. "We can do it in your trailer. Jughead can come, and Betty too. Betty told me that it's just you and him. I thought, well, maybe it would be nice if you came over and helped me cook something for the kids."

He stopped his angry scrubbing. She let her hands creep up over his collar to stroke the soft dark hair at the base of his neck.

"Or I could teach you?" she tried. "If you don't know how to cook?"

He exhaled, the breath shuddering out of him.

"Me and Jug -- we eat Pop's, or takeout. Sometimes eggs or oatmeal or something. I'm no whiz in the kitchen--"

"Then this is the perfect way for me to say thank you," Alice said. 

She leaned over the edge of the sink now, hair dangling above the dirty dishes, so that she could get a look at his face, at how his Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed.

"I owe you a thank you," she told him.

When he looked at her, she realized what that look of his was. It wasn't mere bitterness, or anger, or want, or knowingness, although it showed that all of that was tangled up in him. It was a look like he was haunted every time he remembered she existed, like he was pulling up everything he knew about her, siphoning it out of his blood and breath. 

She brought her hand around now to worry the stubble on his jaw.

"Stop undressing me with your eyes, FP," she said.

If he asked, she'd let him use his mouth.

-

On the way to Sunnyside, Betty brought up the article again.

"My mom is going to let you publish it, because I'm going to make her," she decided. "And it should be a multi-parter. Jug, think about it. An ongoing series, one that makes Hiram Lodge look really bad if he tries to stop it, that makes it seem like he's scared of what the next part will say."

Alice wasn't fond of that kind of journalism. But Betty thought that the more volleys they had against Hiram, the better. 

"I want to do one of the articles," she decided, waving her arms in front of her like this would help illustrate the point, even though mostly it just helped her think. Jughead watched her waving and nodded, like he understood this. "I want to write about--about being a Northsider with ties across the tracks. And how this town rises and falls together, Jug--"

That had always been one way to show she loved him that felt like it was hers, was theirs. Writing.

"--and we could have other Southsiders write, maybe. Like--"

"There's one person," Jughead said. He pulled his lips back behind his teeth, like he thought she wouldn't like his suggestion.

She would. She knew who he was going to suggest.

"Toni," she said immediately. 

Jughead stared at her as though she'd just spontaneously started growing daises out of her ears.

"Are you sure?" he asked, craning his head a little, like he was trying to figure her out. His expression was pained, but he soldiered on. "I get the impression you're, uh, not best friends with her."

"But you're friends with her," Betty pointed out, skirting around what he really meant -- that she'd been jealous -- in favor of moving forward practically. "You could ask her. She lives in Sunnyside too, right? Maybe we should ask her now, Jughead."

Thomas lived in a slightly bigger trailer in this world. Toni still didn't appear to have a bedroom, but her corner was a bit bigger, and her collection of FRANTIC ANTIC hair dye twice as impressive. Jughead and Betty caught her only a few minutes after she came in, and rather than invite them to sit on the couch she plopped down on the floor and began unlacing her boots, a bold, confident way of suggesting that she didn't actually expect them to stay long and wasn't going to disrupt her routine for them.

Or maybe it wasn't so bold or confident. Maybe it was just her way of communicating to Northside Betty Cooper where they stood, the two of them. Jughead was the same, with people like Reggie Mantle or Cheryl, people who had so much more than him that he would never, ever give them the satisfaction of seeing him jarred or unhappy. But Betty didn't want to be Toni Topaz's Reggie Mantle. 

"You two are going to mastermind a longform sympathetic portrayal of the Southside?" Toni said.

She wasn't looking at Jughead. She was looking at Betty. Betty had the feeling that she could have suggested Toni set herself on fire and received a more enthusiastic response. 

"You could look over what we write," Jughead said quickly. "I mean, maybe we're messing up, and--"

He broke off and stared at Betty, realizing that he'd just given away her editor-in-chief rights. He brought his long fingers up, cupped his mouth, and breathed out, like he wasn't sure how he was going to get out of the situation he'd just set up for himself.

"My own article and final editing rights on yours," Toni was saying, in the meantime. She tipped her head and made a face that was as silly as it was lovely. "Well, throw in photography rights and the chance to veto whoever else you plan to offer an article to, and you have a deal."

"No," Jughead said, sounding strained. "Forget I said that. Actually, Betty would never--"

"My mom gets the real final editing rights," Betty said. "But between the three of us? You get final say. It's a deal. And I get next to final say."

Jughead's mouth dropped open. It stayed open for half a second too long.

"You'll catch flies, Jones," Toni said, amused. She tapped Jughead's ankle with her discarded boot, and he snapped his mouth shut again.

"Well," he said slowly, "The two of you do both complain about my over-use of description."

"No," Betty said. "It's not--"

"It's not overuse," said Toni.

"It's _mis_ use," they said at once.

Then they spent a few seconds examining eachother, while Jughead looked vaguely betrayed. 

“Thank you, Toni,” Betty said eventually. “For coming onboard.”

“Hey, if the _Register_ is finally reversing its vehement anti-Southside stance, I’d hate to miss it,” Toni said. 

Betty nodded. This was a far cry from painting nails and comforting each other at the drop of a hat, but it was a start. Even if Toni now began to make shooing motions with her hands. 

“Neither of you is all that good at pretending like you didn’t actually come over to Sunnyside to make out with this one on the Jones family couch, and far be it from me to deny you, Betty,” she said. “So go on!”

Betty took the hint and dragged Jughead out. Outside, it was a balmy late afternoon in Sunnyside, the sinking sun catching the glass windows on some of the trailers and exploding into too much light to contain. Betty blinked away from this, and chose instead to look at Jughead. He looked the way she felt: light, free. He was smiling that smile that made him more dopey than handsome. Her favorite smile, actually. 

“Jeez, Coop, you didn’t hesitate to throw me under the bus,” he said, as they headed for the Jones trailer. 

Betty stopped walking. Because her arm was in Jughead’s, he was forced to stop walking too. 

“What?” she said. 

“Just a joke,” Jughead reassured her. 

“No. Coop. You called me Coop.”

He didn’t call her that. Not in this world. And he was wrinkling his nose now, like he couldn’t understand why he’d done it. 

“It just felt right, I guess,” Jughead said, after a moment. “I don’t— I mean. Yeah. I don’t know. It was like something came over me. Weird.”

But not the weirdest moment of the afternoon. 

They heard a clatter, and turned to see Veronica coming around the corner of a trailer. She was still in her exquisite royal blue dress, but the dress was streaked liberally with mud, courtesy of a very muddy child who was hanging onto one of her shins. 

“Over here?” Veronica said, trying to walk despite the child attached to her. “That’s your friend Chicken’s trailer?”

“No,” said the child, making the ‘no’ long enough that Betty, who knew nothing about him, began to suspect that there was no friend named Chicken. This was the Southside, so it was entirely possible someone here was named Chicken. But the little boy was grinning enough that the general proposition felt dubious. 

It was hard to enjoy this scene, though, because beside her Jughead had stiffened. 

“Veronica,” he said, his nervy dissatisfaction poisoning what was normally a very pretty name. “Not that I don’t love seeing the local Southside children literally slinging mud at you, but what are you doing here?”

Veronica bit her lip, but only for the merest second. Because she was Veronica Lodge, after a second she swallowed, looked to Betty for support, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and spoke up. 

“Jughead,” she began. “Listen. I came here to see—“

He didn’t let her finish. He was at his most enraged, his face twisting up, his hand on his hip like he needed to steady himself. 

“See what? See the visions of chain pharmacies, banks, and Stirbucks coffee stores you Lodges will erect when you've successfully pushed all these families out?”

Betty put a hand on his back, wanting to calm him and tell him to calm down (which would not calm him, since that never worked on anybody) all at the same time. But Veronica’s eyes flicked to hers and Veronica shook her head imperceptibly.

"See the people my family is trying to evict," she said. Her voice didn't shake even once, and Betty was proud of her. "See who they are, and how they live, how my friend, Jughead Jones, lives--"

Jughead had brought a fist to his mouth, and was shaking his head now.

"No," he said, waggling a finger at her. "No. We're not friends. When have we ever been friends, Veronica? When you were pushing me to take a deal so your father could buy out the Southside? When you were rolling your eyes over how none of the Southsiders merits an invite to Lodge events? When you decided you were going to investigate my father for a murder he didn't commit--"

"Jug," Betty put in now. 

Veronica spoke over the both of them. 

"We're not friends!" she said. "I know! We're not! You're Betty's boo, and I'm the rich bitch Archie's into, Jughead. I get it."

Now the little boy reached up and began patting her elbow, but she pressed on, holding her arms out so that her gestures were a plea even if her expression was mostly frustrated.

"But I _want_ to be friends. I want us to know each other better."

"I'm not friends with people who don't care if I'm evicted," Jughead forced out.

"Then why are you friends with Archie still?" Veronica demanded.

Jughead reeled back. Veronica's eyes widened. She seemed to realize she'd misspoken.

"Look," she said, making a swift, brief X with her hands like she wanted to cancel out the whole conversation. "It was wrong of me to act like there was nothing wrong with what my family's doing. But I'm not just going to sit idly by and let my parents get away with ruining more people's lives out of greed, okay? I'm not. So all I ask is that you please, please just give me _one_ more chance to act like a friend to you, a real friend this time, before you decide that we're never going to like each other ever."

Jughead's face was still twisted up. Betty started rubbing his shoulder, looking between him and Veronica and nodding, not wanting to tell him what to do but absolutely certain that she wanted him to agree. The little boy was gently patting Veronica's hip now.

"There, there," he whispered. "I still want to see Chicken."

Veronica looked down at him as though he was completely ruining her moment, but before she could speak up someone else came around the side of the nearest trailer.

It was Jughead's friend Sweet Pea.

"Jones!" he said, walking right past Veronica and not noticing her at first. "Hey. We gotta talk about something. Come on. I'm going to the bank."

"You're going to the bank?" Veronica said immediately. "I'll go to the bank with you. There won't be any problems if I go with you."

Sweet Pea frowned, turned, and processed the mud-soaked vision she and the child presented.

"Why is he covered in mud?" he demanded. "Who did this?"

Veronica looked at the child. The child looked at Veronica.

"Chicken," the child said, in a small voice.

"That's right," Veronica said, her tone breezy and assured. "It was Chicken."

"His _imaginary friend_ did not coat him in _mud_!" Sweet Pea said.

He pulled the child off of Veronica and stomped back the way he'd come. Veronica turned to follow after him, but then sighed and turned back for a moment.

"Please think about what I said," she told Jughead. Then she looked at Betty, dark eyes pleading.

 _I'll talk to him,_ Betty mouthed, not sure what else she could do. Then Veronica nodded, and was after Sweet Pea.

Betty still had her hand on Jughead's shoulder, and now she squeezed him lightly until she got his attention again. Although he'd been so furious with Veronica, when he looked at her he mostly seemed tired, like something in him had fractured and he hadn't realized it yet.

"I think you should give her a chance," Betty said, dancing her fingers along his jawline to focus him.

He closed his eyes. Whatever had fractured seemed to fracture worse.

"I did talk to her. She brushed me off so that her dad could offer to buy my silence."

Betty frowned, but didn't stop stroking his jaw. Jughead was stubborn, and not only did he not trust easy, but sometimes he seemed to fight trusting others, as though he thought trust was something that could poison him. Betty had never quite understood that, even though she'd wanted to. 

The other Betty, though she was very like Betty herself, might have understood.

"Betty," Polly had said, when they were alone after breakfast at the Farm. "You seem...happy with Jughead. You even seem kind of happy with mom."

Betty had stared at her.

"Why wouldn't I be happy with Jughead?" she'd asked slowly.

Polly had given her that blandly knowing look Polly had always been so good at, the look that made Betty miss her and regret their parting in her own world.

"Come on, Betty," she'd said gently. "Dreams? Of another world? Where you were best friends with Veronica Lodge? When I read that in your letters, I thought you'd finally..."

She'd trailed off.

"Cracked," Betty had told her.

The thing she'd feared about Polly in her world, the other Polly had feared about her. And then, between sisters, the whole thing had come out. 

How that other Betty Cooper had been having dreams of a world where she was dating Jughead, living on the Northside, and best friends with Veronica Lodge, but no more happy. How _enraging_ the other Betty had found those dreams, how wild her letters had become.

"I told you to talk to Jughead," Polly said. "But you wouldn't. Instead, you just thought that if you could get out, things might finally be better."

So she'd plotted with Chic to feed Tall Boy and Penny to the Lodges, but really she'd wanted to feed her 'best friend' to Tall boy and Penny, report Tall Boy and Penny for the crime, take the cash, and escape.

"Sometimes escape with Jug," Polly had said slowly. "Sometimes with mom and FP, and your friends too. Sometimes just by yourself. It kept changing. And when you said Veronica Lodge did want to meet with you, I worried it would go wrong, so...so I did something awful. I wrote to mom. But only because I worried it would go wrong!"

It had. Somehow two people had died, because that Betty Cooper had wanted to escape her painful sense of responsibility so badly that she'd become willing to do anything. 

_But then it went right,_ Betty thought. _Then we arrived, and unlike you, other Betty Cooper, I_ wanted _to trust my friends and Jughead._

Or. No. Maybe that wasn't right. Maybe the other Betty had wanted to trust, too. Maybe the other Betty had known, deep down, that escaping into wild darkness didn't get you anywhere. Maybe she'd wanted to ask Jughead and Toni and all her other friends for help, and had just needed a push. Maybe what to Betty-Betty had felt like such a sweet inevitability, finally telling her friends and Jughead the truth, had been to the other Betty a leap of faith.

 _I hope you're happy, Betty Cooper,_ Betty decided.

Then she pulled Jughead in, clasping his face with her hands. 

"Try one more time with Veronica, okay?" she said. "Just trust one more time, Jug. Okay? For me?"

His lashes fanned down, brushing the hollows beneath his eyes. After a moment, he nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue tonight or tomorrow, and then we'll be done! I hope you've enjoyed this thus far.


	18. Epilogue

As soon as they walked into the Jones trailer, Jughead bore down on a pair of dirty glasses on the coffee table. He brought the glasses to the kitchen. Then he wiped down the table. There was a frenetic new energy to it all. Betty didn't know how to feel about that energy. When Jughead had been living alone this fall, Betty had been privately pleased that he'd let her see the shabbiness of the trailer, like he was making her privy to some dark secret he might be otherwise ashamed of. Like he was finally baring himself to her. 

Though she still hadn't let _him_ be privy to all _her_ secrets. No, with Jughead lately, she'd wanted to be the perfect girl, solving all his problems if he'd only be humble enough to let her. Or she'd wanted to match him for darkness, to force him to respect that she had darkness too. She wasn't completely to blame for everything that had happened between them these past few months. She knew that. But all her striving to be the best girl, the worst girl...that hadn't made things better, either. Working herself into a tangle had helped work _them_ into a tangle, too.

Now she found herself collecting all the newspapers strewn about the main room into an orderly pile, which she put on an end table.

"You don't have to," Jughead said, coming to help her. His long fingers closed on hers. They ended up straightening the pile together, him leaning over her, his chest warm on her back. 

"Dad and I are trying to keep the place clean," he muttered. "I think he's kind of better when it's clean. Me too."

She turned in his arms, and caught sight of how worried he looked, the long straight line of his mouth and the young vulnerability in his face. She touched her fingers gently to his cheekbone. Jughead took in a breath and pressed his face into the touch.

"Do you want to--" he began, then broke off, looking annoyed at himself. After a few seconds, he amended it to, "What do you want to do?" 

Exactly what he'd been thinking of with his first question. They'd only slept together twice, but both times something terrible had happened afterwards. This felt unfair, enormously unfair. 

_Pain isn't always my responsibility, not any more than it's always his fault_ , she thought. _Pain sometimes just happens. But, god, does it have the_ worst _timing._

Still, she wasn't going to stop enjoying him and telling him how much she enjoyed him, just because danger might loom around the corner. She wasn't going to deny them that.

But first maybe they had to talk. She took his hand and pulled him down onto the couch. He didn't fight it, falling gracelessly onto the cushions next to her. 

"I have some stuff I want to tell you," Betty said, and watched how he ducked his chin a little, how his gaze slid anxiously to the side. Already trying to predict what she'd say, and how terrible it might be. She grabbed his hands before he could start using those, too, to enact his anxiety.

Where to start? 

Telling him, _I met you in another world,_ while poetic, felt like only half of the truth. She'd met herself, too. And while she knew that eventually she would spill the secrets of that Betty Cooper, and that Jughead Jones, what she wanted to address here and now was this Betty Cooper. This Jughead Jones.

Hers. With his long fingers, always cold, that tangled up in hers so apologetically, like he didn't want to beg too hard for her warmth. She closed a hand on top of their joined hands in order to give it to him anyway.

"The first time we broke up," she said, "I should have done it myself, but I couldn't. Because it was too painful. And I think I'm really, really bad at handling pain, Juggie. Mine or other people's."

She snuck a look at him. He looked troubled, his lips thinning even more. But after a second his free hand came up on top of hers. The message was clear: whatever had happened between them didn't matter. He wasn't going to let go of her, either.

Betty swallowed hard.

"I keep looking for stupid outlets," she said. "And I've done some stupid things, Juggie. When we were broken up, I kissed Archie--"

The worst thing was how his hand tightened, tightened even though the rest of him flinched, like all of him was more fragile than she could have predicted, all except for that hand. 

And she was still talking, but now her voice was smaller, because of the flinch.

"--and I did some other stuff, some internet stuff--"

"Internet stuff?" he asked. His expression was all frantic bewilderment. She felt like crying. She didn't want to explain. She opened her mouth anyway.

"Webcamming. In my bra. It was just talking, but I was in my bra--"

He clasped her even harder, talking over the explanation.

"Betty, I mutilated a woman," he said. He still said it like he was frightened of it. But now he tried to shrug, like his fright didn't matter. He said, shakily, "What's worse than that, right?" 

Betty hated the desperation in his tone. 

"You said she made you run drugs--"

"That was part of it," Jughead bit out. "But she said some stuff about you, too, and -- and really what she did was threaten my dad. I mean, that's why he was back in the Serpents, violating his parole, because of _me_. It was my fault. Everything that happened was my fault, and my responsibility, and I needed to fix it--"

Oh, _god_.

Now she did cry, because that story felt so familiar. Only Jughead didn't know why she was crying, so he let go of her hands to run his fingers shakily over her cheeks, trying to forestall it.

"Betty," he kept saying, attentive and afraid. "Betty, what is it?"

He wasn't quite like his counterpart, that other Jughead. He was just as watchful. He still sometimes looked at her like he was being entrusted with the care of a new star. But where that Jughead had known something even she hadn't -- that you couldn't always make yourself responsible for your mom, your dad, the town, the earth, every person and realm that you loved so fiercely that it hurt you to watch it hurt -- this Jughead didn't know any of that. And she'd never quite noticed before, how his mysterious non-Betty life, his Serpent life, his inner life, or whatever you wanted to call it... 

It wasn't secretive or deliciously forbidden or anything like that. It was similar enough to hers. He thought of FP the way she thought of Alice. 

She remembered, all of sudden, how once she'd told him about her parents fighting, and he'd told her that she could hold her family together.

 _What awful advice, Juggie_ , she thought sadly. _Did you give it because that's what_ you _wanted to do, and couldn't?_

And then there was the way he'd called her the perfect girl. Not the way Archie had said it, earnestly, like he absolutely believed it. No, instead in a way meant to cleave them apart. A designing way. Jughead Jones, stacking the deck to ensure that when they broke up, it was his fault for saying absolutely the wrong thing to her. Saying that she was perfect, when she wasn't, so that she could be blameless, and so perfect.

"Betty," he kept saying now. "Betty, Betty, what's the matter?"

How bad they'd been at understanding each other. Maybe because they hadn't even been able to understand themselves. But even with that, Jughead was still the person she wanted to run to when the world was too much. Jughead was the person whose attention made her happiest. Jughead wasn't the _only_ thing she loved, of course. But he, more than anyone else, had come to symbolize all the things that made pain bearable: sharing fries at Pop's, and a soft flannel shoulder to lean into, and the electric joy of hearing the final school bell and knowing that soon she'd see him. Early autumn, and purposeful rides on buses and motorcycles. The unexpected thrill of holding someone's hand in the rain.

And she knew that for him it was the same. Maybe not the same sensations. But when he thought of her, she stood in for many of the things that made _him_ stronger. She even knew what some of those were, because he'd put them in his novel: milkshakes at Pop's, lights on the river at night, early autumn, wearing a suit and not feeling ridiculous. 

"Jug?" she told him now. "I don't want you doing things you'll be sorry for after, just because you think it's up to you to fix things. I do that to, but we're going to stop. Both of us."

Jughead nodded slowly, like he wanted to understand.

He didn't. He hadn't been through what she had, hadn't seen himself magnified and reflected. And for a moment it felt painful, to think that there could be a chasm between them, Betty on one side, Jughead on the other. 

But she knew what to do with that pain.

She pulled him in and kissed him, feeling how his shoulders quivered beneath her hands, how he threw himself into the kiss like if he didn't he might split apart. How his hands on her waist were firm despite this. 

"Juggie," she whispered, when they broke apart and were panting forehead-to-forehead. "We're not going to go dark, or tell ourselves we have to be perfect, all just -- just to fix when things go wrong. Neither of us is that, okay?"

"Perfect, definitely not, that's not me," he said back, grinning. "Dark -- well. Some of us are just gloomy horrors, Betts--"

She pressed two fingers to the side of his throat, gently, wondering if he would stop. He did. He swallowed hard, too. His own fingers danced on her waist, waiting.

"Sometimes things just go wrong," she told him, fiercely. "Sometimes we can't solve everything. Not me. Not you. I'll still be here for you when that happens."

Like he'd be there for her. Like so many people were there for her -- Polly, who she had to reach out to; and the other Toni, and hopefully this one someday. Veronica. Kevin and Archie. All the rogue's gallery, reaching for each other to prop each other up, not because they felt responsible for each other but because that was one way to get through pain. That was one way to endure it. 

Her chosen way, now. She was done with her other methods.

-

She took her time taking his clothes off.

This time he wasn't tied up. She only had to ask him to let her take the lead, and he did. 

"It's not exactly a trial to be touched by you, Betty Cooper," he said, with a grin and a lot of bravado.

But he was still anxious to please, mortified at how quickly he firmed up, and unable to keep from kissing the stubborn softness of her stomach when she made a face over it.

"Jughead Jones, do you I have to tie you up?" she said, exasperated.

Jughead considered this even though he was spread out across her legs, his hair flopping in his face, his mouth pressing kisses to her navel.

"There are worse fates, I guess," he said, just after his third kiss and right before his fourth. 

This time, when they were spent, nothing bad happened. No dead bodies. No fake FBI agents. She drifted off to sleep in the curve of his arm, his hair tickling her nose. Twice her phone buzzed, first from Archie ( _can we talk I need you ronnie broke up with me_ ), then from Veronica ( _B, what would you say about a formal Southside/Northside alliance, y/y? I can order T-shirts._ ) But both times she only blinked at it, her brain caught in the drowsy, delicious heaviness of rest well-earned. 

FP came in, some hours later, calling for Jughead and bearing a vegetable stir fry he claimed to have made at the Cooper house.

His voice cut through her slumber. Even worse than his voice was how she felt Jughead sit up next to her and whisper, "You spent all night at Betty's house making stir fry? _What_?"

FP was stammering something out. He seemed to have found something unexpected in the trailer bedroom.

Even half-asleep, Betty had to suppose he had. She pulled Jughead down next to her anyway, not ready to get up yet. Now all the events of the past few months were flapping about her brain -- her mother and Chic, whatever was happening with Archie, Hiram Lodge's plans, and so many more potential disasters.

She shooed them away so that she could press a kiss to Jughead's mouth and keep going.


End file.
